PSA: 8 character password no longer safe

[Joonikko]

http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2013/07/11/the-8-character-password-is-no-longer-secure/

Just a heads up for people to change their passwords to something more secure, 8 character password can be cracked easily in less than 5 and a half hours.

Some tips to improve your password and account security:

• use passwords or passphrases that are at least longer than 8 characters.
• Do not use the same password on multiple accounts.
• Enable 2-step verification (most email services support this).
• change your password periodically

These are very simple and easy things to do, but how many of you actually bother with it? Sadly, probably not that many, but hopefully this was useful in some way.

- Joonikko

 

[WaLLy]

Saw this on Yahoo earlier today. Good tips.

 

[rocketfish]

What I have for a password on my comp is: 17 keystrokes, 3 are capitals, 4 are numbers. The rest are lower case.
What I do is think back to when I was young at a certain age(say 10) and who your best friend was. I use part of my name and my friends and what year it was.
Something like this: JamesGeorgeSmith1980 would be my password. Only I know who was my friend was then and what year.

 

[Lonsense]

My passwords are most likely to be leet speak since I can remember it and it's also complicated

 

[BluBirD78]

Good advice man, I totally agree with you as well...

I use a program called Keepass, and you can use it with Chrome, Firefox, etc... with extensions you can install. I have different passwords for all my log in sites, and all of them are at least 20 characters long with U/L case and symbols. With this program you don't need to remember the passwords, when you get to the log in just click on the input field and press Alt+Ctl and A (or whatever you change this too).

Another note, if you like security then I would also suggest using Truecrypt to encrypt your hard drive as well, VERY useful if you do traveling because it will completely encrypt the entire hard drive, and uses the bootloader to enter a password before windows starts. Be careful though if you use this, there are NO backdoors to the program so if you forget your password then your screwed!

P.S. Both of these programs are open source and free of course

 

[Nikon]

No worries here. My password is 24 characters long with a mixture of numbers, uppercase letters, and lower case letters.

 

[Gavin]

No worries here. My password is 24 characters long with a mixture of numbers, uppercase letters, and lower case letters.

Whouldn't happen to be your serial number eh?