You may safely argue that AI is already everywhere. It somehow powers our gadgets, provides us with the answer to some strange queries, and aids in the writing of essays, articles, and other things. Yet, it is also safe to argue that something as vast as AI can be used for evil deeds and goals, and that might happen in the future. There has already been research on the use of AI for password cracking, and the findings are alarming.
AI WILL EASILY CRACK YOUR PASSWORD IF YOU STILL USE ONLY DIGITS OR NUMBERS
A cybersecurity company called Home Security Heroes released a study showing how effective and quick AI is at breaking passwords. The researchers used PassGAN, a recent AI-powered tool, as an illustration, to show why password security is important. The paper shows that the researchers analyzed over 15,680,000 passwords using PassGAN. The results are very alarming because the tech was able to decipher 51% of popular passwords in just a minute. In about an hour, it has taken down about 65% of popular passwords while 71% and 81% with down within a day and a month respectively.
Nevertheless, you do not need to give up just yet because the company published a chart outlining which passwords are the trickiest to guess or will take the longest to crack. It might take the tool 289 years to figure out your 12-digit password if it has both upper- and lowercase letters. When you combine numbers and symbols, you get 2,000 years, and when you combine both, you get 30,000 years. You can glance at the following table:
The company advises that you retain passwords with at least 12 characters, and it is always recommended that you avoid using simple numbers because doing so will make it exceedingly easy. On the website, for instance, there is a feature where you can create a random password and it will estimate how long it would take. The report states that when it added a password of an 11-digit number, it stated “Instantly,” but it changed to “2 trillion years,” for a 12-digit password.
Recall that AI will get even more potent, and it’s possible that more tools like PassGAN may become even more potent in the future. Thus, we suggest you keep your codes as secure as you can.
