Interesting article about passwords

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Paul N

Paul N

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
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How to create a 'super password'

" ...The researchers used clusters of graphics cards to crack eight-character passwords in less than two hours. But when the researchers applied that same processing power to 12-character passwords, they found it would take 17,134 years to make them snap."

"They assumed a sophisticated hacker might be able to try 1 trillion password combinations per second. In that scenario, it takes 180 years to crack an 11-character password, but there's a big jump when you add just one more character -- 17,134 years."
 
But it would take me 30 seconds to forget it.
 
And if you go to the Microsoft site they reference in the article; Microsoft thinks you need a 12 character password.
 
Paul N said:
Nope. Example: 1qaZ2wsX3edC4rfV5tgB

I don't need to remember it, it's on the keyboard in front of you.......:p

Look at 1,2,3,4 then the letters below them (1qaz, 2wsc...etc) I only capitalized each last letter of the series.
Click to expand...

But that would be a sequence that would be guessable. A weak password no matter how long won't do you any good. ie the admin, admin default user name password of many routers. or user, passwor combo that was the default in the 90's.

12 1's or 12 a's would not stand up to a password program for the full 17K years.
 
I use a 19 character password for PGP and for FileGuard.

Most of my other passwords would be pretty easy to guess … I guess. :o
 
Bob Doyle said:
But that would be a sequence that would be guessable. A weak password no matter how long won't do you any good. ie the admin, admin default user name password of many routers. or user, passwor combo that was the default in the 90's.

12 1's or 12 a's would not stand up to a password program for the full 17K years.
Click to expand...

It's an example and one could use say, row 1, 4, 3, 5, and 8! One just needs to remember: 14358. Or make one out of your last 4 digits of your phone number, say 8483 =

8uhV4rgB8uhV3efV

It's not a sequence by any logic or imagination and it's not found in a dictionary. And the capitalization (and the repetition in this example) add to the complexity.

And.... it's 16 digits!! Add a coluple of !@^^(*) and you a need super computer to crack it, in 10,000 years!

But will anybody use it? Nah...till they hack into their bank account.
 
Thanks for the link, Paul. This is good to know. :)
 
I remember one of the first passwords I ever tried using was "Hen3ry" and oddly enough, it turns out another Tom Lehrer fan had already claimed it!

I like the idea of using phrases or short sentences as passwords. Then all one has to do is remember that.

Oy.
 
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