Determine how long it takes to hack your password by using the formula in this article
Theft of email services, messaging apps, social media accounts, and other services is on the rise. Although it is possible to stop cybercriminals from accessing our data, different security factors determine how effective an attack will be.
The first is the kind of password we use when we sign up for different online services. Although there are websites that can verify a password's security in a matter of seconds, it is very useful to know how long it would take a hacker to get it.
This article will demonstrate how long it takes to crack a password, a task that can be completed in a matter of seconds if the password is short or pertains to a particular subject (e.g., names, football teams, hobbies, etc.).
There are multiple factors that affect how long it takes to crack a password. The password's creation process is among the most significant. For instance, a simple password is easier to crack than one that contains special characters, both capital and lowercase.
The computer security firm Hive Systems has released an extremely thorough table that illustrates how long it takes to crack a password in order to clarify this. As you can see from this table, the length of the key significantly affects how long it takes to crack.
The number of characters in the password is shown in each row. Similarly, the columns indicate the type of characters the password contains. To better understand the picture, we can summarize it as follows:
- Numeric passwords of 4 to 10 characters can be cracked in less than one second.
- Numeric passwords of 11 to 18 characters: It takes from 2 seconds to 9 months to crack them.
- Passwords containing lowercase letters of 4 to 10 characters: The time taken to crack them ranges from 1 second to 58 minutes.
- Passwords containing lowercase letters of 11 to 18 characters: It takes from one day to 23 million years to crack them.
- Passwords with both uppercase and lowercase letters, 4 to 10 characters long: time varies from 1 second to 1 month.
- Passwords containing lowercase and uppercase letters, 11 to 18 characters long: It takes 5 to 6 billion years to crack this type of password.
- Passwords containing numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and 4 to 10 characters long: The time required to crack them ranges from 1 second to 7 months.
- Passwords containing numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and 11 to 18 characters: It takes 41 to 100 billion years to crack them.
- Passwords consisting of numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and symbols with 4 to 10 characters: It takes from 1 second to 5 years to crack them.
Passwords consisting of numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and symbols of 11 to 18 characters: It takes 34,000 to 4,000 billion years to crack them.
In short, passwords created from numbers are the easiest to crack. When symbols, letters, and length (more than 10 characters) are added to a password, it is virtually impossible to crack it using brute force.
- How to create a strong password?
If your password consists only of numbers, is short, or uses only lowercase or uppercase letters, you'll practically have to replace it with a more secure one. You can use websites to generate strong passwords or follow these tips:
- Combining numbers with letters and symbols.
- Use at least 11 characters when creating your password.
- Do not set a password that includes dates related to you or your family members.
- Do not put your name or your family name.
Last but not least, we understand how complex it is to remember a multi-character password, so we recommend using a password manager.