Interesting (a bit wonkish) article on hacking passwords. Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331” | Ars Technica
A couple of snippets
A couple of snippets
Their recommendation for a secure password.The ease these crackers had in recovering as many as 90 percent of the hashes they targeted from a real-world breach also exposes the inability many services experience when trying to measure the relative strength or weakness of various passwords. A recently launched site from chipmaker Intel asks users "How strong is your password?," and it estimated it would take six years to crack the passcode "BandGeek2014". That estimate is laughable given that it was one of the first ones to fall at the hands of all three real-world crackers.
The article says they will publish a primer on password managers.In the meantime, readers should take pains to make sure their passwords are a minimum of 11 characters, contain upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and letters, and aren't part of a pattern.