Researchers at Kaspersky discovered that only 23% of the 193 million compromised English passwords they examined would take more than a year to crack, compared to 45% of the passwords that could be cracked in under a minute.
Improved digital hygiene and timely password policies are imperative, according to a study released on Thursday that examined passwords found on the darknet.
According to Kaspersky’s telemetry data, in 2023 there were more than 32 million attempts to utilise password stealers to assault users.
Given that most of the passwords under evaluation were readily cracked using clever guessing algorithms, the results highlight the significance of strong password management.
The report revealed, “The majority of the examined passwords (57 per cent) contain a word from the dictionary, which significantly reduces the passwords’ strength. Among the most popular vocabulary sequences, several groups can be distinguished:
“Names: “ahmed”, “nguyen”, “kumar”, “kevin”, “daniel”. Popular words: “forever”, “love”, “google”, “hacker”, “gamer”. Standard passwords: “password”, “qwerty12345”, “admin”, “12345”, “team.”
Only 19% of all passwords, according to the analysis, have the elements of a strong combination, which includes a non-dictionary word, capital and lowercase letters, digits, and symbols.
Simultaneously, the research findings indicated that 39% of these passwords might be deciphered in less than sixty minutes with innovative algorithms.
The report claims that in order to crack passwords, attackers don’t need specialised knowledge or pricey equipment.
It states, “For example, a powerful laptop processor will be able to find the correct combination for a password of 8 lowercase letters or digits using brute force in just 7 minutes.
“Modern video cards will cope with the same task in 17 seconds. In addition, smart algorithms for guessing passwords consider character replacements (“e” with “3”, “1” with “!” or “a” with “@”) and popular sequences (“qwerty”, “12345”, “asdfg”).”
Yuliya Novikova, Head of Digital Footprint Intelligence at Kaspersky, inadvertently stated that people make “human” passwords, which include names, numbers, and words taken from dictionaries in their mother tongues.
He claims that because algorithms guess combinations, even seemingly powerful ones are rarely entirely random as seen on the digital news platform.
He stated, “Given that, the most dependable solution is to generate a completely random password using modern and reliable password managers. Such apps as Kaspersky Password Manager can securely store large volumes of data, providing comprehensive and robust protection for user information.”
