This website shows how long it would take for a hacker to break your password
Using data benchmarks from Intel and the password cracking tool John the Ripper, the site gives an eye-opening view for average users wondering whether they may have a strong password.
Many people still resort to weak passwords, which hackers can easily guess using free software tools like John the Ripper. A password that has a word found in a dictionary with a number thrown on the end is something that a tool like "John" could break in about an hour.
John uses what's called a "brute force method" to attack passwords. With a simple text word list, John will try different words, letters, phrases, and combinations of all of them over a period of time until it finally gets it right. And passwords like "123456" or "password" - which are consistently found on worst password lists - would take less than seconds to crack.
"That is the first thing that we try to go after," said Kurt Muhl, an ethical hacker with RedTeam Security.
The amount of characters used often makes a password stronger. An infographic on the site shows having 7 characters could take only .29 milliseconds, while using 12 characters could take up to two centuries. Still, that doesn't mean you should just add dictionary words to make your password longer, since adding complexity such as uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers, all help.
"The longer your passwords could possibly be," Muhl said. "The more guesses it's gonna take for me to get it right."
You can check out the free tool at the website here.