How secure is your password?

Information Security experts recommend that password length should be minimum 8 characters and should have a mix of alphabets (lower and upper case), numerals and special characters. What happens if a user has a password of a lower strength? In this article, you can check how strong your password is.


The table below shows the maximum time required for a fast dual processor PC to guess passwords and recover the right password using a simple brute force “key-search” attack, for various lengths and complexities of passwords:


Password Strength

It should be noted that we have assumed only a fast dual core processor PC is being used for cracking the password. However, if supercomputers are used for cracking the password, a 7 character (common symbols +numerals + alphabets –both upper and lower case) password can be cracked in 20 hours and a similar complexity password with 8 characters can be cracked in 83.5 days.


Now, there is a compelling reason for you to use an 8 character password with a mix of special characters, numerals and alphabets with a mix of upper and lower case.