Did you know that it only takes a hacker 1 hour to crack a 9-character password with only uppercase and lowercase letters? For comparison: last year it took 19 hours! Why is it that it is increasingly easy for cybercriminals to misuse your password? How can you better protect yourself? And what are the trends on the Belgian market? The time it takes for a hacker to crack a password using brute-force techniques has been significantly reduced thanks to advances in graphic processing technology.
For example, in 2022, a seemingly complex password from 2021 can now be obtained in just a few seconds. As a result, companies and their employees are more vulnerable. A hacked password is often the basis of a major cyber attack. As much as 80% of reported breaches related to hacking are the result of hacked or misused passwords. More and more companies fall victim to such an attack.
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How can we explain this trend?
This trend is due to two causes: on the one hand, cybercriminals have increasingly better technologies to crack passwords, and on the other hand, companies are still too lax with their passwords. Just think of standard administrator passwords that are never changed, or easy-to-guess passwords that are directly linked to the company. Sometimes people mistakenly think that they have strong and complex passwords by adding several strange characters, but forget the importance of a long password. Such a complex password of only 6 characters is cracked almost instantly by a computer program. Finally, the policy to change passwords on a regular basis is often missing.
Combine that with the automated computer programs available to hackers and cracking passwords becomes child’s play. Often all you have to do is select an attack type from an available list and the rest happens automatically.
How can you protect yourself?
There is no need to panic! With a few handy tips you will immediately go a long way.
- Combine different words into sentences to create a strong password that you can also easily remember. Replace letters with characters. An example: Todayben1kgaanwink@len or wAtishetleukalhetz0nnig1s.
- Never use the same password for different websites or applications. In case your password of one application is cracked, all other applications are still protected.
- Use a password manager to store all passwords securely. Such a digital safe can even generate very complex passwords for you.
- Enable multi-factor authentication. This provides an extra security factor on top of the user password. This can be something a user knows (such as a PIN or an answer to a question), something a user has (such as a card, email address or registered smartphone), or biometric data (such as a fingerprint or facial recognition).
- Change your passwords regularly. In an ideal world, you change your password after every use. There are applications that do this automatically for you. Since this is not possible for every application, we recommend that you change your passwords at least every 60 to 90 days.
Does the ‘uncrackable’ password exist?
In principle, any password can be cracked. The big difference is in the time it takes a hacker to do that. For example, a complex password with a length of 8 characters can already be cracked within an hour, while the same complex password with a length of 11 characters can only be cracked after 34 years. That is why it is important to always take into account the complexity and length of the password when choosing a new password.
The time it takes for a hacker to crack a password using brute-force techniques has been significantly reduced thanks to advances in graphic processing technology. For example, in 2022, a seemingly complex password from 2021 can now be obtained in just a few seconds. As a result, companies and their employees are more vulnerable. A hacked password is often the basis of a major cyber attack. As much as 80% of reported breaches related to hacking are the result of hacked or misused passwords. More and more companies fall victim to such an attack.
How can we explain this trend?
This trend is due to two causes: on the one hand, cybercriminals have increasingly better technologies to crack passwords, and on the other hand, companies are still too lax with their passwords. Just think of standard administrator passwords that are never changed, or easy-to-guess passwords that are directly linked to the company. Sometimes people mistakenly think that they have strong and complex passwords by adding several strange characters, but forget the importance of a long password.
Such a complex password of only 6 characters is cracked almost instantly by a computer program. Finally, the policy to change passwords on a regular basis is often missing. Combine that with the automated computer programs available to hackers and cracking passwords becomes child’s play. Often all you have to do is select an attack type from an available list and the rest happens automatically.
