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Intelligent Utility
Julian Jackson
Julian Jackson
 · Posted in Intelligent Utility

Secure Your Passwords Against Cracking

An 8-character password could be cracked in less than an hour, according to web security experts Hive Systems

Unfortunately, advances in computing technology have cut the time needed to crack a password using brute force techniques. Even relatively long and complex passwords, around 12 characters, are not entirely secure from wily cybercriminals.

Hive Systems conducted some experiments and found that an 8-character complex password could be cracked in just thirty nine minutes if the attacker were to take advantage of the best graphics processing technology. A seven-character complex password could be cracked in thirty one seconds, while one with six or fewer characters could be cracked immediately. Shorter passwords with only for example, numbers or lowercase letters, or only numbers and letters, would take just a few minutes to crack.

The rise in power of graphics processors, driven by advanced gaming and the use of those processors in cryptocurrency mining has increased the speed of some cyber attack technology as well: For example, a seven-character password with letters, numbers and symbols that would take seven minutes to crack in 2020 but just thirty one seconds in 2022.

 

Image: Hive Systems

Given these advances in cyber black arts, how can you and your organization improve the security of your password-protected accounts and data?

 

  • Use a passphrase instead of a password. A passphrase is a long string of ordinary words. Passphrases tend to be more secure than passwords and are usually easier to remember. An example: “sky-sunset-bird” uses dashes to separate each word and would take two billion years to break, according to Security.org.

  • Install a password manager across your devices. Since creating and remembering multiple complex and lengthy passwords on your own is impossible, a password manager is more user-friendly.

  • If you do use a password manager, create a strong master password. Create a complex and long password or passphrase that you can remember and probably write it down somewhere that's not online.

 

Finally, you can test how secure your passwords are. To see the strength of a potential password, enter it at a site such as https://bitwarden.com/password-strength. The results will give you an estimate of how long it would take a hacker to work out your password.