You might think your online passwords are strong enough to prevent attackers from breaking into your apps, stealing your money, and hacking your Amazon and eBay accounts. But thanks to artificial intelligence, your password isn't as strong as you thought.
A “password guessing” platform that uses AI, called PassGAN (from the password generative adversarial network) was able to find 51% of the passwords it tried to crack in less than 60 seconds. It was able to crack 71% of passwords in less than a day. This of course is scary. The Home Security Heroes published the results of a study that used PassGAN to try to crack 15,6 million passwords.
Time It Takes Using AI to Crack Your Password [2023]
| # OF character |
Numbers Only | Lowercase Letters | Lowercase Upper & Letters | Numbers, Upper & Lowercase Letters | Numbers, Upper & Lowercase Letters, Symbols |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly |
| 5 | instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly |
| 6 | instantly | instantly | instantly | instantly | 4 Seconds |
| 7 | instantly | instantly | 22 Seconds | 42 Seconds | 6 Minutes |
| 8 | instantly | 3 Seconds | 19 Minutes | 48 Minutes | 7 Hours |
| 9 | instantly | 1 Minutes | 11 Hours | 2 Days | 2 Weeks |
| 10 | instantly | 1 Hours | 4 Weeks | 6 Months | 5 Years |
| 11 | instantly | 23 Hours | 4 Years | 38 Years | 356 Years |
| 12 | 25 Seconds | 3 Weeks | 289 Years | 2K Years | 30K Years |
| 13 | 3 Minutes | 11 Months | 16K Years | 91K Years | 2M Years |
| 14 | 36 Minutes | 49 Years | 827K Years | 9M Years | 187M Years |
| 15 | 5 Hours | 890 Years | 47M Years | 613M Years | 14Bn Years |
| 16 | 2 Days | 23K Years | 2Bn Years | 26Bn Years | 1Tn Years |
| 17 | 3 Weeks | 812K Years | 539.72M Years | 2Tn Years | 95Tn Years |
| 18 | 10 Months | 22M Years | 7.23Bn Years | 96Tn Years | 6Qn Years |
Research has shown that 51% of common passwords can be cracked using AI in less than a minute. 65% of these passwords can be cracked in less than an hour. AI can find 71% of common passwords in less than a day, and 81% of common passwords can be cracked in less than a month. PassGAN has the ability to “autonomously learn the distribution of real passwords from leaked passwords.”
To protect yourself from the AI password guessing platform, you should have passwords that are at least 12 characters long using a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
A 12-character password consisting only of numbers can be cracked in less than 25 seconds. Using uppercase and lowercase letters, it will take 289 years to crack, and if you add numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols, your password could be safe from artificial intelligence for the next 30.000 years.
