IS YOUR PASSWORD STRONG ENOUGH

Ok so here we are again choosing lame password that are very easy to guess and easier to brute force attacking  softwares to crack it. Recent study has showed that 30% of the users choose password that are less than six characters or less, 60% of users choose their password from a limited set of alpha-numeric characters in fact almost 50% users used names, dictionary words, slang words or consecutive digits or alphabets. Many people use '123456' as password in fact it is the most common password used online (how lame is it).

Recently I blogged about Twitter banning 370 passwords on the registration page which include similar, most common and lame passwords used over the net.  So whats there with people choosing such a lame password like 'abc123' or '123456' or 'password' itself and leave a digital key like the one under the door mate of your house,
“I guess it’s just a genetic flaw in humans,” said Amichai Shulman, the chief technology officer at Imperva



Out of 32 milion passwords from RockYou, a company that makes softwares for social-networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook , examined by Imperva team they have found that there was a lot of possibility of breaking the passwords for the hackers using smart and new brute force attacking softwares, indeed the numbers reveal that "the combination of poor passwords and automated attack means that in just 110 attempts , a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts."
Now that number is something to be very worried about taken into account the kind of informations that are stored online now a days.

image courtesy CXO

SO THE QUESTION IS HOW STRONG YOUR PASSWORD REALLY IS

First of all look at the list above and check whether your password is in that list, if its there the you know instantly its time for you to choose a new and stronger password. If its not there and you want to know the strength of  your password the there are lots of tools available online which determines your password strength.
Here I have a guidelines for you to choose your password provided by  geekwishdom.com

Tips for strong passwords:

1. Make your password 8 characters or more
2. Use mixed case letters (upper and lower case)
3. Use more than one number
4. Use special characters (!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,?,_,~)
5. Use L33t
6. Use a random password generator/password vault like Password Safe or pwsafe
7. Use PasswordMaker

So once you are ready with a password fulfilling the guidelines provided above, now is the time to check the strength you can go to either to microsoft site  or any other site like gmail registration form etc available to check it.

My personal favourate is Password meter which not only checks your password but also gives you tips on what kind of character you can add or remove to make your password stronger, is it consecutive numbers or alphabets or just lowercase or just upper case etc.
So the next time you choose yourself to be safe than make sure to keep different password for different accounts and a stronger password.