How Quickly Can Your Password be Cracked?

Posted: June 13, 2012

Think your password is strong? Well think again.

Think your password is strong? Well think again.

Security breaches of mind-numbing size like those at LinkedIn and eHarmony.com set crypto- and security geeks to chattering about weak passwords and lazy users and the importance of non-alphanumeric characters to security.[caption id="attachment_10245" align="alignright" width="400"]© maxkabakov - Fotolia.com[/caption]

And insisting on a particular number of characters in a password is just pointless security-fetish control freakishness, right?

Nope. The number and type of characters make a big difference.

How big? Adding a symbol eliminates the possibility of a straight dictionary attack (using, literally, words from a dictionary. Adding a symbol, especially an unusual one, makes it much harder to crack even using rainbow tables (collections of alphanumeric combinations, only some of which include symbols).

How big a difference to length and character make?

Read the entire article How Quickly Can Your Password be Cracked?