THE Lowly Peon

How I'd Hack Your Weak Password

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14 April 2010, 8:19am

Lifehacker guest writer John Pozadzides writes about how easy it is to "hack" most people's passwords. The idea is pretty simple in the beginning, as CC Math professors taught me all too often: no matter how sophisticated the encryption is, including the US government's several-hundred-megabyte encryption key, people are still vulnerable because they often choose simple guessable passwords, or write them on a post-it note next to their computer.

He then goes on to talk about what he does if your password isn't something simple like "password" or "hello" or "123456". Using relatively simple software, one can simply log in a bunch of times guessing different passwords. But my bank is secure and won't let people do that, you may say. But what about hacking a simpler site that you don't care much about that happens to share the same password? Using this software only takes an average of 5 minutes for a 6 character, all lower-case, password. FIVE MINUTES!

Using at least one capital letter increases the time taken to crack a 7 character password from 2 hours to 2 years. Add one more character, and the time it takes goes up to a whopping 2 centuries.

In conclusion. If you think you really can't remember a lots of different passwords, buy an app like 1Password (also available on the iPhone), which requires you to only remember one password (get it?), and it securely stores your others. And add one simple capital letter!