{"id":628340,"date":"2023-04-12T09:49:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T14:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/12\/ai-can-crack-most-passwords-faster-than-you-can-read-this-article\/"},"modified":"2023-04-12T09:49:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T14:49:57","slug":"ai-can-crack-most-passwords-faster-than-you-can-read-this-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/12\/ai-can-crack-most-passwords-faster-than-you-can-read-this-article\/","title":{"rendered":"AI can crack most passwords faster than you can read this article"},"content":{"rendered":"

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$\"Padlock$ <\/p>\n

Image: Darwin Laganzon \/ Pixabay<\/span>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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If you didn\u2019t already believe that weak passwords could be cracked easily<\/a>, artificial intelligence is here to prove the point definitively. An AI-driven tool cracked over half the passwords fed to it in under a minute\u2014and 65 percent in under an hour.<\/p>\n

The experiment, which was run by cybersecurity firm Home Security Heroes, involved PassGAN, a new kind of password cracker. Unlike typical password cracking tools, which lean on fixed data sets, PassGAN is driven by two neural networks: one taught to generate passwords, and the other taught to distinguish between the the first\u2019s \u201cfake\u201d passwords and passwords taken from real data breaches. As it\u2019s trained, this kind of generative adaptive network learns to offer more sophisticated password predictions, allowing for faster and widespread cracking.<\/p>\n

For Home Security Heroes\u2019 test, PassGAN was fed over 15 million passwords from the 2009 RockYou breach, a data set often used to train password cracking tools. Passwords under four and over 18 characters were excluded. In no surprise to anyone, passwords with low character count and little character variation were cracked instantly. But even slightly more complex passwords could be determined much quicker. If simple enough, an 11 character password also fell immediately. Overall, the tool was able to crack 51 percent of common passwords in under a minute, 65 percent in under an hour, 71 percent in a day, and 81 percent in a month.<\/p>\n

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This chart shows how the mix of numbers, letters, and symbols affects cracking time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Home Security Heroes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Based on their findings, Home Security Heroes offers several pieces of advice, two of which are repeats often said by security experts (and those who report on security, ahem). First, don\u2019t reuse passwords. Second, change your passwords every so often, especially for hacked websites. Finally, use passwords at least 15 characters in length, with a mix of at least two letters (upper and lower case), numbers, and symbols in the string\u2014and don\u2019t follow any obvious or predictable password patterns.<\/p>\n
You can read more about Home Security Heroes\u2019s , but the biggest takeaway just may be how much randomness in a password can affect cracking time. We at PCWorld have said for years (and will keep saying!) to use long, random, and unique passwords for each site, but this experiment drives the point home. Home Security Heroes says that a password with 18 lower and upper case letters, symbols, and numbers would take 6 *quintillion <\/em>years to guess. (A quintillion is one-billion billions, so in other words, that\u2019s a six followed by a heck of a lot of zeros.)<\/p>\n*
However, that\u2019s right now<\/em>. An 18-character password likely won\u2019t solve our security needs forever. AI models learn rapidly\u2014you\u2019ve probably seen how other applications that use artificial intelligence (i.e., AI-generated art<\/a>, AI chat bots<\/a>) are growing in leaps and bounds. Just imagine that applied to data from never-ending hacks. The only way to stay secure is by employing the strongest passwords you can manage\u2014and there\u2019s help for that in the form of password managers<\/a>. Not only can they generate random, unique passwords for you, but they\u2019ll help change your credentials when it\u2019s time to yet again step up your password strength. Be sure to turn on two-factor authentication<\/a> wherever you can, too, just in case your password does go down.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tAuthor: Alaina Yee<\/a>, Senior Editor\t\t<\/h3>\n
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Alaina Yee is PCWorld’s resident bargain hunter\u2014when she’s not covering PC building, computer components, mini-PCs, and more, she’s scouring for the best tech deals. Previously her work has appeared in PC Gamer, IGN, Maximum PC, and Official Xbox Magazine. You can find her on Twitter at @morphingball<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Read More<\/a>
\n Tami Serna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Image: Darwin Laganzon \/ Pixabay If you didn\u2019t already believe that weak passwords could be cracked easily, artificial intelligence is here to prove the point definitively. An AI-driven tool cracked over half the passwords fed to it in under a minute\u2014and 65 percent in under an hour. The experiment, which was run by cybersecurity firm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":628341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27444,28039,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-628340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crack","8":"category-passwords","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}