Your password could be hacked in seconds

Posted by Zack Morgan in April 2010

Internet standards expert John Pozadzides, on choosing secure passwords:

“Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.”

If your password is five lowercase characters, time to change it. According to John P it can be cracked in... 11.9 seconds.

It’s worth reading the full article — How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords — but top tips include:

• Don’t use dictionary words or people’s names
• Mix in some uppercase characters and punctuation
• Use different passwords for everything