Thursday, August 12, 2010

Protecting Your Password

In line with the topic of Internet security, I recommend trying howsecureismypassword.net. This site is a simple password checker that analyzes a password’s strength. You simply type in a string of characters on the blank and it tells you in how long it would take before your password can be cracked.

Characters such as “qwerty” or “batman” or even “password”, when typed in, are classified as one of the 500 most common passwords, and as such, would be cracked almost instantly. More creative passwords (mostly inspired by the jejemon language) such as “$3cuR!tYPa$$w0rd” was described in the following manner: “It would take about 3 quadrillion years for a desktop PC to crack your password. “

Some factors that make a password strong are their randomness, the use of different characters, even those not found in the dictionary such as symbols #$%^, the use of different languages, and the length. Using any or a combination of these factors may make your password strong and therefore difficult to crack. It can thus test how creative a person get.

Interestingly enough, I also came up upon a website http://boingboing.net/2009/01/02/top-500-worst-passwo.html. This was based on Mark Burnett’s work of Perfect Passwords, released in 2005. See if yours is among one of them. If it is, then it’s time to get creative.

http://lifehacker.com/5577396/find-out-how-long-it-would-take-to-crack-your-password-at-how-secure-is-my-password

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