Which Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) movie was it? The hacker guesses Ryan’s password in under 60 seconds. But that was just a movie – right?
Right. In real life, the hacker isn’t a person. It’s a computer, and it can figure out your password a lot faster. A whole lot faster. And if you use something simple, like lovebug or sweetpea or mydogskip, you’re not even giving the hacker a challenge. Hacking software has a ‘dictionary’ of words and names, ordinary numbers and letter sequences, and they try these first.
Virtually every article on password hacking gives an estimate of how long it would take to crack a password of a certain amount of characters. The later the article is written, the faster that time is, because computers are faster and software is more sophisticated and more accessible.
Bottom line – you need to have really good passwords to protect your important data.
A good password should include upper and lower case letters, one or more digits, and one or more symbols. It should be at least eight characters long, preferably much longer. And it should not be any recognizable word or common number.
So #8s9eo$Q would be a good password…
If you could remember it. But unless you have a better memory that mine, you’re going to have to rely on a different system. Tomorrow’s post will give a good system.
But an even better one is to use the encryption that Roboform gives. Read how to get a free trial of Roboform at www.aldash.com/roboform .