Well, your cat’s name, or your birthday aren’t going to stand up well under a brute force attack.
Actually, you can learn more about that attack type here and other types here. While there’s no “100% certain” way of protection, common sense, security software (updated), a good firewall, protection from “plug and play” devices like USB sticks and strong passwords for your accounts will do a good deal to help.
Chrome has its own password generator, but PassBox and PWGen are really good alternatives.
PWGen is free and has excellent features:
- Free and Open-Source software
- Full Unicode support
- Unobtrusive: easy to use, doesn’t install any weird DLL files, doesn’t write to the Windows registry, doesn’t even write to your hard disk if you don’t want it, can be uninstalled easily
- Uses up-to-date cryptography (AES, SHA-2) to generate random data for high-quality passwords
- Numerous password options for various purposes
- Generation of large amounts of passwords at once
- Generation of passphrases composed of words from a word list
- Pattern-based password generation (formatted passwords) provides nearly endless possibilities to customize passwords to the user’s needs
- “Password hasher” functionality: Generate passwords based on a master password and a parameter string (e.g., the name of a website), similar to “Hashapass”
- Secure text encryption
- Multilingual support
- In-depth manual (52 pages)
- Runs on all Windows versions (32-bit and 64-bit; beginning with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2)
It’s latest version is 2.5.4 (released 3.12.2015).
You can download it from SourceForge.net and when downloading from any site, always choose “Custom installation”, where EVERY step of the process is clear, and reveals any “wrapped” or “bundled” additions (usually unwelcome).
Note: There are a few (six) utilities (including the user manual). I suggest downloading the manual (pdf).
Source and screenshots: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/pwgen-create-secure-passwords-passphrases