Depending on your news sources, you may or may not have seen the following table describing how easy it is to crack your password using the ‘brute force’ method. (guessing with completely random strings of letters)
| Password Length |
All Characters |
Only lowercase |
|
3 characters |
0.86 seconds 1.36 minutes 2.15 hours 8.51 days 2.21 years 2.10 centuries 20 millennia 1,899 millennia 180,365 millennia 17,184,705 millennia 1,627,797,068 millennia 154,640,721,434 millennia |
0.02 seconds .046 seconds 11.9 seconds 5.15 minutes 2.23 hours 2.42 days 2.07 months 4.48 years 1.16 centuries 3.03 millennia 78.7 millennia 2,046 millennia |
And you thought your passwords were safe at the minimum 6 characters because you added a 1 at the end.
This article covers how a hacker would get at your bank accounts and other important websites. The top three suggestions from the article:
- Don’t underestimate your e-mail password! Most ‘password reset’ buttons require only your e-mail address
- Don’t use the same password for everything
- Use UpperCase, lowercase and numb3rs.
My suggestion:
- The longer, the better (the longest you can memorize).
According to Moore’s Law: the power of a computer doubles ever 1.5 years. This shortens the password guessing time, so you better have a really long password.
If you’d like to check your current password or try out new ones, visit Microsoft’s password checker.
[-via One Man's Blog]
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