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Environmental

A long boring sentence beats a tricky password

13 sections · 10 pts/section
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The password you hate might be the weak one

Picture two passwords. Which one is harder to crack?

Before / After

Tap to flip between the two passwords.

Tr0ub4dor&3

One is short with symbols. One is four plain words.

Most people pick the tricky one. It looks safe.

Your guess

Which password takes a computer LONGER to guess?

More entropy means more guesses to try.

More guesses means more time to crack it.

entropy
A measure of how many guesses a password could be. More entropy means harder to crack.

The tricky password is also the one you can barely remember.

So the password you hate may be protecting you least.

A short password packed with symbols is the strongest kind.Tap to reveal

It is hard to spot because the symbols look tough to a person. But a computer counts possible guesses, not how messy it reads. A short password has far fewer guesses to try.

Sources

  • onlinehashcrack.com
  • xkcd 936, explainxkcd.com
  • Wikipedia, "Credential stuffing"