![]() We wanted to access the accuracy of password strength testers by using a more sophisticated measurement, so we picked five testers that indicate how long it would take a brute force algorithm to crack the password. How We Chose Our Password Strength TestersĪlthough there are hundreds of password strength testers, the majority only tell you if a password is weak, good, strong, or very strong. In this case, we used the special characters by holding down the shift key when typing 123 on a U.S. We strengthened it by exchanging the “n” for an “ñ” and the letter “o” for the number “0”.Ībc123 became Many password security blogs recommend using a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters. The password trustno1 implies the user of this password is security-conscious, but this password is the 37th most-breached password. This change to one of the most commonly-breached passwords resulted in a 16-character password – longer than the minimum password length recommended by Microsoft (14 characters) and many other leading security experts. ![]() Unfortunately, this does not turn a weak password into a strong password. Like adding the year to “password” (above) or adding your date of birth to your name, adding the nature of an account to a weak password is a common practice. By adding the year to the second most commonly used password, we increased the entropy count (randomness) from 37.60 to 62.04 which – according to a 1Password blog – is just about “sufficient for any purpose”. Because all password managers will identify these as weak passwords, we amended the passwords to add complexity – either by adding numbers, letters, or substituting numbers and letters for special characters. We picked five commonly-used passwords from the top 100 passwords identified in data breaches by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). We also ran the same test with a randomly-generated password and a randomly-generated passphrase to determine if accuracy issues existed with more complex passwords and NIST-recommended passphrases. To find out, we ran a test pitching five variations of commonly-used passwords against five password strength testers. But how accurate are password strength testers? Their purpose is to indicate whether the passwords chosen by users are weak, good, strong, or very strong – the implication being that good, strong, and very strong passwords will help protect the account from brute force attacks. Password strength testers are becoming more common in the account sign-up process.
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