How long does it take to crack a password?

Have you ever wondered how long it takes for a hacker to crack a password? Do you think that you have an unbreachable one?

If your password is one of the most common ones ( qwerty or 123456), it takes a blink of an eye for a hacker to guess.

How to know how long it takes to crack a password? How to increase the duration and protect your passwords? Read the article to find out.

What makes a password easy or difficult to crack?

Very common passwords are straightforward to guess. A short string of random letters or numbers takes seconds to decipher.

The more complex the password, the more time it takes for a hacker to crack a password.

The complexity of a credential can be defined by a few main criteria:

• number of characters (for instance, a 5-characters credential is always easier to crack than a 15-character one);
• the use of uppercase letters (especially if you use a few uppercase letters in the middle of the password);
• the use of special characters and symbols (particularly if you use more than one).

The more elements are in the password, the longer it takes for a cybercriminal to reveal it.

How long does it take to crack a password ?

45% of Americans use short passwords (8 characters or less). The credentials of this length are the easiest to decipher.

Statista provides an informative infographic that reveals the relationship between the complexity of a credential and the time it takes to crack a password.

As can be noted, even an 8-characters long password takes longer to decipher if it contains at least one number or a special character. Therefore, you can effortlessly strengthen such a password as cinnamon by adding at least one uppercase letter, a number, or a special symbol. By doing this, you can already prolong the time of a crack from instantly to 8 hours.

To explain how it works, the time to crack a password increases because every additional character adds the number of potential combinations. If you use only letters, the computer needs to run all possible letter-based combinations. When you add a number, the computer now needs to count all letters and number-based combinations, and so on.

Increasing the length and complexity of the password increases the time it takes to crack a password.

How to create almost unbreachable passwords?

Increase the duration for a hacker to crack a password by following a few tips.

Here is how you can create an almost unbreakable password (the one that takes thousands of years to decipher):

• Create only long passwords. Ideally, they should contain 15 characters or more.
• Include lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and special symbols.
• Avoid using the most leaked passwords as a base for your stronger password.
• Never include personal information (names, date of birth, address, phone, or Social Security numbers).
• Never reuse one password on more than one account.

Naturally, the more complex the password, the harder it is to remember it.

Luckily, you do not need to. There are tools for that.

A game-changing strategy: use a password manager

The easiest way to have secure, almost unbreachable passwords – is to use a password manager to store your credentials.

Reliable password manager (such as PassCamp) allows you to create randomly generated, very secure passwords and automatically save them to your account. The next time you need it, the tool automatically fills it in.

You can unlock your password manager account by remembering only one Master Password. Therefore, you can have secure passwords by not knowing any of them.

That is the game-changing strategy that radically increases the level of data security. Create passwords so complex that even you cannot remember them.

That is how you can increase the time for a cybercriminal to crack a password to infinity.