The news is constantly full of doom and gloom stories about how “Big Corp” has just had their database hacked and users personal details are now in the bad boys hands.
Well I for one have long sung the merits of needing strong passwords and tear my hair out when family and friends wonder why their PC security [ha] has been breached. Translate this attitude into the Corporate world and it isn’t hard to imagine that your data isn’t guaranteed to be safe.
That said, these things will make geeks in charge get very twitchy about protecting their systems – and rightly so.
So when I or acknowledged security experts tell you to choose a long, complicated & secure password then you will sit up and listen. Won’t you?
And that password will contain numbers and punctuation (if the website or application allows them) as well as letters in BOTH cases. Furthermore that password will consist of 10 or more digits. Finally that password won’t include a recognisable word, will it? Why? Well it’s a simple matter of mathmatics really. A password which consists of only letters drawn from a 26-character pool (a-z) is so much easier to crack than if the range of characters is 52 (a-z and A-Z) or 62 (including digits too). Then add punctuation and the combinations go astronomical.
So have you ever wondered how secure your favourite password is then wander over here: howsecureismypassword.net and as you type, the indicator is updated after every character to tell you, approximately, how long a desktop PC would typically take to crack it.
Worried yet?
But before you go all mental trying to follow my rules take some heart. I have one standard password I use on websites where I don’t care if my ID gets taken over or lost. Places such as forums or blogs that require a login before I can leave a comment – this does make life easier but that standard password is crackable in 87yrs according to the above website. But one of my typical 14 character passwords will take 32 Billion years to crack.
Take away one punctuation mark and that same password becomes breakabl ein 87 days – so it’s simple. Add some punctuation.
Now, how secure is your password?
I came across this site on another church tech site in the last few weeks.
http://randomkeygen.com/
This site is a great way to be sure the password you generate is random AND secure.
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Not one I've come accross before Greg and personally I'm not sure I like the way they are presented but … still they are plenty good enough.
Myself I'd point you back at the top 3 of my "related posts" for alternatives :)
One password would take 2 hours, my other would talk 15 thousand years. Guess I need to switch which one I use for banking and which one I use for Facebook!
Another option would be to stop using facebook ;)
I have a password that can be cracked using Nessus in under 6 hrs yet this site says "about 15 years"….
Now that is intriguing.
I guess the lesson then is don't use passwords that can be broken in less than 15yrs. Try mine of 32Billion I bet Nessus would struggle with that one.