Edward Snowden schools John Oliver in the art of password-making

It turns out there was more to the Edward Snowden interview John Oliver conducted on “Last Week Tonight” this week, and HBO has now posted a clip on YouTube.

While this portion of their interview was not as confrontational as the portion that aired Sunday night, it’s just as informative to a public presumably ill-informed and under-protected when it comes to online passwords.

As Oliver learned, writing “onetwothreefour” is not an acceptable password. Neither is, “passwerd.”

According to Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency, any password consisting of eight characters or less can be hacked almost instantaneously. Oliver revealed that his password has only five characters.

So what should someone like Oliver do? Well, Snowden has a suggestion for what he considers to be a secure password. But it’s one that Oliver definitely doesn’t like.

What is it? Watch the clip to find out.

This segment is part of the longer interview Oliver recently conducted with Snowden in Moscow. The larger portion included Oliver confronting Snowden with the fact that he didn’t have complete knowledge of all of the sensitive information he leaked to the media.

Twitter: @patrickkevinday