Fact for the day: 2-05-2012

Did you know that:

- An user has an average of 25 online accounts

- An average user has 6-7 different passwords

- 66% of the US users have only one or two passwords

- An average user logs in 8 times a day

- The average password length is 8 characters

- The most commonly used password is password1

- 54.9% of the users use personally meaningful words

- 28.6% of the users use the Remember my password function

- 15% of the users write down their password

- The average time users maintain the same password is 31 months

How they Hack Someone’s Password

Hacking passwords ain’t cool, but it’s hot! Hacking someone’s password might be difficult, but not impossible. From always I had one question in my mind – how hackers read your mind and crack the password? Well, after doing some quick research with my best friend Google, I got some light focused on my doubts. There are several password cracking tools available that hackers use to crack or hack anyone’s password and surprisingly most of the times they hit it right!

When your password gets stolen or hacked, you should not blame either your fate or the hacker. You should blame YOU first. Were you using the following password methods before your password hacking :

1. 123456, abcdef or asdfgh


2. partner, children or your name


3. “password” as your password


4. pet name, college name or country name


5. date of birth


6. “god” or “devil”


7. “love” or “letmein” or “money”


8. mobile number, phone number


9. website’s name as password


10. “cancer”, “aids”, “welcome”


11. List goes on…

If you have your password in the above formats, you may need to change it as soon as possible. Hackers don’t believe on guesses, they rely on permutation and combination. It’s really easy to hack above common passwords using password crackers and here you can find the top 10 password crackers.

Now let’s say that your password has been hacked. If you were using that same password across all websites, the hacker can hackother account’s password as well. If they cracked your internet banking or credit card account password, you can guess the outcomes. In order to avoid such unpleasant incidents, you need to keep your password really strong and unpredictable.

Here is a chart that shows the time taken by the password crackers to crack your password. The more stronger password, the more time it will take to crack passwords.

From the above screenshot it’s clear that passwords with only lowercase characters can easily be cracked, where passwords containing both lowercase and uppercase characters can make it really difficult for the hacker. Here are some password tips:

• 
  
  Don’t make your password predictable. You can do so by substituting numbers with letters and vice verse. (e.g – letter “O” can be written as number zero “0″, or letter “a” can be replaced with symbol “@”).


• 
  
  Use uppercase and lowercase numbers randomly throughout the password (e.g – @mER1cAbLue5).


• 
  
  Never use a English dictionary word as your password as a brute force attack can pull out the password easily.


• 
  
  You may keep a place you loved, your favourite restaurant, favourite actor’s last film name as password.


• 
  
  Keep different username and password combinations for different websites. A hacker can hack into all your site’s passwords if he finds one. So, never keep the same password and username combination elsewhere.


• 
  
  Use RoboForm password manager to manage all your passwords  or any other password manager that is your favorite.


• 
  
  Using Microsoft’s password checker, howsecureismypassword. you can check how secure your password is.

And the last but not the least tip : Never store or write your passwords in a paper, cell phone, diary etc. Keep your password confidential and secure enough.

You can also try using makemeapassword to generate secure passwords for your email and other accounts.

MakeMeAPassword to build a secure password

MakeMeAPassword is an online program that lets you to make secure password string containing spaces special characters, numbers, etc. Here you find lots and lots of password of different types and you can chose for your emails, online logins, etc.

This site is a sister concern site of HowSecureIsMyPassword where you can test the strength or security of of your password.

MakeMeAPassword has a simple interface with just a button to generate password, and check boxes to add numbers and special characters to them. I personally used the website to get me a stronger password.

Read article about HowSecureIsMyPassword.

HowSecureIsMyPassword to Know your Password Strength

 

HowSecureIsMyPassword is an online program that lets you test strength of your password. You can use this site to know how safe (or not) is your password that you use. You just need to enter the password and it will let you know whether it is safe or not. Here you can submit as many passwords as you want to be analyzed and you can instantly find the result.

 

HowSecureIsMyPassword has a simple interface with just a text box. Simply type your password in it to know your password strength. Well it’s a useful online tool that lets you know about the importance of using secure passwords. I personally tried some passwords and found that how passwords become difficult to crack if you use special characters in them.

HowSecureIsMyPassword basically invariably crack password open one after the other. But one thing you need to worry about is, if the passwords could be cracked in something like 15 seconds. I would suggest you to use this site, as it may open your eyes. You should remember to use alphabets, numbers, and special characters in your password.