6 Comments

How safe is your password?

An interesting article on the speed at which passwords can by guessed or cracked by a computer. Typically users pick very simple and easy to guess passwords, but this article shows that no matter what password you choose it is only a matter of time until it is defeated.

For example:
A 9 character numeric password (0123456789) will take a computer only 28 hours to guess. While a 8 character password with uppercase and lowercase letters as well as numbers and symbols will take 22,875 Years to guess.

Guess the site password needs to be changed :-P

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  • GH

    Those calculations assume certain parameters such as how much time each attempt takes. Many systems slow down the guess cycles by delaying a login session for several seconds after some number of attempts or by dropping the session completely. Same goes for http access passwords, you only get three tries.

    The basis argument is still valid. You should not use low quality passwords.

  • http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=matkins70 Mikey

    oops…:P

  • Marc Kohlbrugge

    Nice to see I’m on the safe side. 20+ years, and I change my passwords every now and then :). Sniffers are the highest security risk I think (in my case).

  • Emory

    Thats really interesting, I had no idea it would only take 8 hours to crack my password O_O
    I’m all scared now lol

  • R031E5

    lol, an upper-and-lower-case-8-digit pass would take 7.2 quadrillion years to discover by brute force

  • http://rbenson.wordpress.com/ ryanB

    I’m bored, might as well start now…

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