by Simon Black
Seven minutes.
That’s how long it would take to crack one of the passwords I had been using for more than ten years, according to the crypto experts at Silent Circle.
…
But a few months ago when I signed up for my Silent Circle account, I was surprised to see the results when I tested one of my passwords against their crypto analysis tool.
It turns out that the password wasn’t so secure after all. You can try it for yourself here:
https://accounts.silentcircle.com/join/
(You don’t have to sign up, you can just type in a password and see for yourself…)
I was never a crypto specialist while in the intelligence business, so I studied the issue for the last few months to find out about the latest password cracking algorithms.
It turns out that most things we think about password security are completely wrong.
I must be doing something right — I entered a modified version of my password (same structure, different keyboard characters) and received a reply of “23 years.”