Are you annoyed that many websites require your password to be at least eight characters long and contain upper and lower case letters as well as numbers? There is a very good reason for this.
Because how secure are your passwords? If they consist of only numbers, it often takes hackers only seconds to solve them. On the other hand, if it contains numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and special characters, cracking a long password could take several years, if not decades.
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From seconds to centuries
This was revealed in the report Information technology company Hive Systems. They've created an updated model that shows how long it would take a professional hacker, through trial and error, to crack your passwords.
Most websites in 2024 require your password to be at least eight characters long. If the eight characters were just numbers, it would take hackers just 37 seconds to find the solution.
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If the password contains only lowercase letters, it will take 22 hours to find the solution. If upper and lower case letters are used, the time increases to eight months, while if you mix the same eight characters with both lower and upper case letters, numbers and symbols, it will take hackers more than seven years to crack the code.
If you used the same method with nine characters instead of eight, it would take the hackers 479 years.
However, they warn that this virtual time spent will likely decrease in the coming years as technology will make the time needed to solve passwords shorter.
Good password procedures
There are separate sites, such as Security.org You can safely test the security of your passwords, measured against how long it would take a computer to crack them.
In the past, among other things, National Security Authority (NSM) He came out and encouraged people to have good password habits.
NSM recommendation for individuals
- Use two-factor authentication where offered
- Use unique passwords (one password for each service)
- Use password managers
- In particular, you can also create a password list using pen and paper, but protecting the document as collateral
- Always change the default password on products you purchase
- You can also check whether your username and password are accessible by others using the Service ';–Have I been punished?
- Use strong passwords that are difficult to guess/crack
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