# How many seconds would it take to break your password?



## ekim68 (Jul 8, 2003)

> Security breaches of mind-numbing size like those at LinkedIn and EHarmony.com set crypto- and security geeks to chattering about weak passwords and lazy users and the importance of non-alphanumeric characters to security.
> 
> And insisting on a particular number of characters in a password is just pointless security-fetish control freakishness, right?
> 
> Nope. The number and type of characters make a big difference.


Here


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

A lot of people confront this type of problem head-on and try to break the passwords. It's almost always easier to bypass the password or eliminate the need for one.

But let's face it. Most people are safe simply because they haven't encountered anyone that is trying to break in. Once someone is close enough that they are trying to break passwords, you are already in trouble.

But, yes, having tried some of the "brute-force" breakers, and had them run for weeks, I can see how adding even one number or symbol makes all the difference to cracking.


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## Ent (Apr 11, 2009)

What the article neglects to mention is that the usefullness of said symbol is maximized by putting it somewhere unpredictable, because then the breaker has to assume that any character could be a number or symbol. Many breakers would find "terrapin7" (dictionary word plus a number at the end) significantly faster than they'd find "ter7rapin".


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