Patent ID: 8892897

Claim:
A method comprising: on an electronic computing device, obtaining a first password, the first password comprising a string of one or more characters; appending a first character from a set of characters to the first password to form a modified first password; applying a hash function to the modified first password to generate a first hashed password, the first hashed password comprising a first bit string; determining whether a portion of the first hashed password includes a predefined sequence of bits; when the first hashed password includes the predefined sequence of bits, designating the modified first password as an auditable password; and when the first hashed password does not include the predefined sequence of bits then performing steps of: a) appending a different character from the set of characters to the end of the first password to form a modified first password, the different character not previously appended to the end of the first password; b) applying the hash function to the modified first password; c) evaluating a bit string result of applying the hash function from step b; d) when the bit string result from step c does not include the predefined sequence of bits, repeating steps a-c until the bit string result from step c includes the predefined sequence of bits or until each character in the set of characters has been appended to the end of the first password per step a; and e) when the bit string from step c includes the predefined sequence of bits, designating the modified first password as an auditable password.