Passwords: make yours strong and secure.
So what are the minimum requirements? A password should contain at least twelve characters and contain numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters. With those requirements met, in the year 2024, it would take a hacker 38 million years to brute force your password. Surprisingly, in the year 2022, it would have taken a hacker 200 years to brute force your password.
So why has it become more difficult to brute force passwords of the same length and complexity in the year 2024 than in the year 2022? It is because the hashing algorithms being used to store passwords have become stronger. To put it another way, the companies (websites) which store your passwords should be using the latest and strongest hashing algorithms in order to keep your password secure.
Since we rely on someone else to keep our passwords secure, it is the author's opinion that you should future proof your passwords by having a minimum of sixteen characters including numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters.
So how do I generate a secure random password? You could use an online service like bitwarden.com/password-generator/ or even better, the author has created a password generator for the Windows and Linux operating systems. You can download my password generator, which is located on my github website here: Password-Generator. You will find the Windows executable and Linux binary under the heading "Assets".
Where did I get the statistics for the strength of passwords? All information on this topic was from the research completed by hivesystems.com.
This article was written in August, 2024.