Another Step Toward the End of the Password
December 28th, 2012
Using custom software and a computer cluster of 25 graphics cards, password-cracking expert Jeremi Gosney has created a system capable of guessing 350 billion Windows passwords per second. From the article, it takes 5½ hours to “brute force every possible eight-character [Windows] password containing upper- and lower-case letters, digits, and symbols.” This development reinforces the message of this xkcd comic, that long passwords are much harder to crack than shorter but more complicated ones. Note also that an easy way to create long but memorable passwords is to use a passphrase.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
