You all hopefully know by now that using your birthday as a password is not the most secure option. Nor your dog’s name, your mother’s name and so on.

Secure passwords require a mix of numbers, characters and special characters mixed with caps, and even then it’s probably not as secure as you think. The best thing is mix all character types in a lengthy “salad” and hope for the better.

This might change in the future. A team of U.S. neuroscientists and cryptographers has created a system in which using a password doesn’t require you to actually “know” it. Instead, you memorize it in your subconscious. The process, however, takes a bit of time.

From Science Blog:

A team of U.S. neuroscientists and cryptographers has created a system in which using a password doesn’t require you to actually “know” it. Since the code lurks in your subconscious, passwords can’t be written down or forced out by coercion—perhaps providing a whole new means of security.

The system is based on implicit learning, or the process by which new information is absorbed without any awareness of what has been learned. Like tying your shoes or riding a bike, patterns are memorized and performed repeatedly with little attention to the process that is carried out.

Designed by Hristo Bojinov and Dan Boneh of Stanford University, the password system involves the use of a game that somewhat resembles Guitar Hero. Users must hit keys responding to one of six buttons (pictured below). During an average 45-minute training session, users are fed thousands of keystroke sequences—but one of these sequences isn’t quite as random as the others. The process subconsciously teaches users a unique 30-character password.

This all sounds like spy games or Inception, but having 38bit entropy in one memorized password is an achievement.