• News
    • Tech News
    • AI
  • Gadgets
    • Apple
    • iPhone
  • Gaming
    • Playstation
    • Xbox
  • Science
    • News
    • Space
  • Streaming
    • Netflix
  • Vehicles
    • Car News
  • Social Media
    • WhatsApp
    • YouTube
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
TikTok
Snapchat
WhatsApp
Submit Your Content
A shocking number of passwords can be hacked in a minute and yours could be one of them

Home> News

Published 15:39 26 Jun 2024 GMT+1

A shocking number of passwords can be hacked in a minute and yours could be one of them

Hackers could guess nearly half of them in just 60 seconds.

Rebekah Jordan

Rebekah Jordan

Creating a password can be a hassle. You need it to be random but not so random that you'll forget it.

Sometimes, it feels easier to use the same password for everything. But this could put you at serious risk of hacking - especially if it's easy to crack.

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky analysed 193 million passwords and found that 45% of passwords could be guessed by scammers within a minute.

That's right, a mere 60 seconds to get access to your data.

Advert

And another 14% could be cracked within the hour, which is still a large majority of passwords.

Only 4% took from one month to a year to break and 23% took more than a year to hack. The latter are considered to be hacker-resistant.

Chainarong Prasertthai/Getty
Chainarong Prasertthai/Getty

In 2023, cybercriminals made more than 32 million attempts to identify personal passwords.

Advert

With that number growing, it could only be a matter of time until your account is at risk.

So what makes a password easy to guess and how can we make sure they are secure in the future?

Alongside the most obvious culprits, like ‘password’ and ‘123456’, the majority of passwords examined contained a word from the dictionary, which reduces the password’s overall strength.

Another common mistake is using easily identifiable names, such as ‘Ahmed’, ‘Nguyen’, ‘Kumar’, ‘Kevin’ and ‘Daniel’.

Advert

Many people tend to choose passwords based on things relevant to their life such as pet names, family members and birthdays - all of which make them easier to crack.

The cybersecurity team pointed out that the most popular words used in passwords include ‘forever’, ‘love’, ‘google’, ‘hacker’ and ‘gamer’.

d3sign/Getty
d3sign/Getty

Other standard - and very obvious - passwords involved ‘password’, ‘qwerty12345’, ‘admin’, ‘12345’ and ‘team’.

Advert

Yuliya Novikova, Kaspersky’s head of digital footprint intelligence, said: ‘Unconsciously, human beings create “human” passwords – containing the words from the dictionary in their native languages, featuring names and numbers etc.

‘Even seemingly strong combinations are rarely completely random, so they can be guessed by algorithms.'

The best solution is to use password managers to generate completely random passwords and store them in a secure place.

‘Such apps can securely store large volumes of data, providing comprehensive and robust protection for user information,' she added.

Advert

Furthermore, adding numbers or a couple of capital letters and symbols such as £,$,@, or ! will help make passwords much harder to guess.

The more random, the better.

As an extra step of security, users should enable two-factor authentication which requires two forms of identification to access an account.

Featured Image Credit: Chainarong Prasertthai/d3sign/Getty
Cybersecurity
Laptops
Tech News

Advert

Advert

Advert

Choose your content:

15 hours ago
16 hours ago
  • 15 hours ago

    US deals with security breach as AI scammer impersonates Secretary of State Marco Rubio to foreign ministers

    The scammer was sending AI-generated voicemails

    News
  • 16 hours ago

    Investor who sold revolutionary tech for 300 Bitcoin is worth a small fortune decade later

    He's been all in on Bitcoin since he was 12

    News
  • 16 hours ago

    Tragic story of once bustling California town left 90% destroyed by one small piece of metal

    The fire tragically claimed the lives of 85 people

    News
  • 16 hours ago

    Man branded 'dishonest and deceitful' fired after company discovered he was faking over 100 hours of work at home

    A warning to others who think they can slack off when working from home

    News
  • Microsoft users warned to act now as millions of passwords will be deleted soon
  • Millions of Microsoft users warned they have just days before their password are deleted
  • Experts urge people to act fast as 19,000,000,000 passwords are leaked in major hack
  • Seven warning signs your phone has been hacked as number of cyber attacks rise