

One method of creating super-strong passwords is by creating a shape on the keyboard – incorporating symbols, numbers and letters.
#Strong passwords password
In addition to this, you should never use the same password more than once. This is inviting passwords to be stolen and used by someone else.
#Strong passwords how to
It would still take a supercomputer six months! How to Build a Strong PasswordĪs a rule of thumb, you should never write down your passwords.
#Strong passwords Pc
At the other end of the scale, the PC could take over 3million years to work out 12 digits using letters, numbers and symbols. A supercomputer could take less than 1/100th of a second. of charactersĪ standard PC running a password hacking algorithm will discover a 12 digit password in about 18 hours. A 6-character password with only letters has 308,915,776 possible combinations, 8 has 208,827,064,576 and an 8-character password with letters, numbers and symbols has 128,063,081,718,016 possible combinations. Most importantly, passwords should be long and complex. Penalties can stack up to £17.8 Million or 4% of global annual turnover – whichever one is the highest. If you’re in Europe, GDPR is now in effect. The Ponemon Institute sponsored by IBM puts the global average cost of a data breach at $3.6 Million or $141 per data record. This cost the company £60 Million alongside the loss of over 100,000 customers. Back in 2015, TalkTalk suffered from a cyberattack compromising more than 400 million customer accounts. For a business, the consequences are catastrophic. These break-ins have resulted in stolen data such as email addresses, passwords, location data and other personal details.įor an individual, the consequences of hacking can be lifechanging, with the average recovery time from identity theft being 6 months and 200 hours of work.

Hacked websites listed include MyFitnessPal, MyHeritage and Animoto. If not used directly, this information can be sold onto the dark web’s ‘Dream Market’ alongside drugs, weapons and other illicit items. Most of the time, cracking one password is all it takes to gain access to multiple accounts. 33% of people use the same password every time and with the average user having 90 online accounts it becomes a simple and easy numbers game. However, the root problem is that 73% of users have the same password for multiple sites. With this technique it inevitable that it will crack your password eventually. They work by combing through all possible alpha-numeric combinations from aaa1 to zzz10. Brute Force attacks are similar but much more rigorous. Words like sunshine and princess are commonly used passwords and combining words like ‘LetMeIn’ won’t protect you for more than a few seconds. A Dictionary Attack runs a file containing words from the dictionary against your password. The top 2 methods that hackers use to crack passwords are just that, guesses. How is this possible by just guessing passwords? The most common way which hackers use to strong-arm their way into computers and access personal information is by guessing not so strong passwords.
