So one of the most common topics in internet security these days amongst both your everyday consumer and in big business to date is in how secure is one’s password? In my opinion there are two issues that largely affect users and they are the lack of information/understanding about internet passwords and also the dissolution that they have a “strong password”. This site helps any user determine just how strong a password is whether or not you’re an experienced C++ programmer or on the other end of the scale, you use a mac (the Early Learning Centre computer for adults).
So How Secure Is My Password? aims to solve much of the headache of creating a password by telling you how long it would take a standard desktop PC to crack your password. Clearly unless you’re using some form of 256-bit dynamic Cipherunicorn-A method of cryptology, then every password is crackable with enough processing power and brute strength. However it’s scary just how quick some passwords can be cracked according to this website. It calculates it using the processing speed of an average desktop PC so if you’re the most wanted man on Earth and have Interpol on your tail, it’s likely they’ll chase your butt with something more substantial than an Intel Core 2 Duo running XP.
Either way I must admit, my Facebook account did get hacked lately by someone in Illinois (according to Facebook who had my location as suspicious). So naturally I was curious and after inputting what I thought was a pretty secure password, I get the following depressing screenshot:
10 seconds … seriously? I then went ahead and inputted my current password that I use for Facebook and was relieved to find that the figure went up to a very comforting 42 years. I then tested a few other passwords I’d used before and finding out that the most secure password I have, which I use on one of my machines would take a PC a good 163 thousand years to crack. Big smiles all round.
Anyways you should all definitely check out this website even for just a minute just to double check your password. There is a note on the website that this is totally secure and no, you’re not misguidedly sending your password to the webmaster or anything like that. There’s a copy of the source code for anyone whose into that and also a useful link to how to pick a good password.
EDIT (03/07/2010): Also, for a list of the Top 500 most common and therefore easiest to crack passwords, go here. Shamefully I recognised two from the list as my previous passwords.
