RICHMOND, Va. – In its annual audit of hackers’ ability to crack passwords through brute force, Hive Systems found that any password under seven characters can be cracked within a matter of hours.

To increase password security, regulatory bodies recommend longer and unique passwords. Despite this, many still stick to using the same easy-to-guess passwords for the sake of convenience. Learn ...

Overall, the longer and the more complex the passwords, the longer it takes to crack them, with the most complex eight-character passwords taking 164 years.

In this case, just a single RTX 4090 can crack a complex 8-character password with numbers, lower- and uppercase letters, and symbols, in just 59 minutes.

We've covered NordPass' yearly list of the 200 most used passwords before, with '123456' taking the top spot in both 2020, 2022, and now once again in 2024. If this is a password you're currently ...