Learn why strong, secure paswords matter by seeing how easy it is to crack passwords with a common tool. Longer, more complex passwords are best, and you'll see why.

Alright, so let's crack some passwords I've constructed to see how easy it is. To do this, I will use Hashcat, a free and open-source password cracker available for anyone to use.

To start cracking Vault passwords using Hashcat, you need three pieces of information: 'Key-Value', 'Iteration count', and 'Account email address'. These should be formatted as 'Key-Value ...

For the first time, the freely available password cracker ocl-Hashcat-plus is able to tackle passcodes with as many as 55 characters. It's an improvement that comes as more and more people are relying ...

Along with the positive aspects of the new generative AI services come new risks. One that’s surfaced is an advanced approach to cracking passwords called PassGAN. Using the latest AI, it was ...

Replying to a question in the same Twitter thread, Croley said Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 GPU is more than three times faster than an AMD Radeon RX 6900 when using the hash speed benchmark Hashcat.

Dougherty then uses a mix of the password-cracking software hashcat and a program he built, called expandpass, which runs through varying, controlled permutations of specific words and symbols ...

What this means in practical terms is that someone wishing to crack or recover an eight-character password with a rig featuring an octet of RTX 4090 cards, can reliably do so in under 50 minutes.

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.