About secure passwords and logins

Nowadays, in the world of computers, it is exceptionally important to create secure logins and passwords. Let us look at the two most common weaknesses of a password/login.

1. Short length of the password or login

"Brute force" is a method of cracking a password, when a password is estimated by looking at all possible variations. A short password of up to five symbols is pretty easy to find out. Let's look at the time someone would need to figure out a password, consisting of four symbols such as small and capital letters and numbers- total of 62 possible symbols. All possible combinations would come to a total of:

62⁴ = 14776336 combinations.

If an intruder's computer is able to check 100 variations a second (which is possible if there are a few computers working at the same time), to check all possible variations of your password he will need:

14776336 / (100*60*60*24) = 1,71 day

It's less than two days!

If you are using a password, consisting of 8 symbols, under the same conditions the required time will be 70000 years- much more secure.

2. A simple word in the password or login

Using a simple word for a password/login is just as dangerous as using a short one. The thing is, not only a lot of people use common words for password, they also use the words they associate with the word "password." Using the word "password" for password is a huge mistake. Don't think that the intruder won't guess it- he doesn't have to! It's been a while since the whole databases-dictionaries of the most commonly used passwords have been composed. For example, a lot of people like to use their first and last name, year and date of birth, words "god", "password", "login"- to make things easier to remember. Big mistake. It's easier for the intruder to check a database of approximately 70000 words (regular speech is using about 500 words) for ten minutes than check all other possible combinations. That's why you shouldn't use words, names, last names, dates... What you need is a combination of letters and numbers that is neither short nor easy to guess. Or, at least, some kind of an unusual word, that is hard to guess with extra numbers or letters added to it.

Create a login or password of no shorter than eight characters to avoid both of the vulnerabilities.

SecureWord is Secure password manager and your essential assistant on this matter. All of your data will be stored under a 256-bit password (2²⁵⁶ = 1.15*10⁷⁷ or a 70-digit number of possible combinations. SecureWord will also help you to create safe passwords for other websites / programs.

Also, we offer you an free utility that may create secure password or login. PasswordGuru is an free generator of passwords and logins.

Alternatively, you can use our online secure password generator.