Is My Password Vulnerable?

123456, qwerty, football, iloveyou, these are in the top 10 of most used passwords. It’s a disaster, as a hacker can crack them within three seconds! And with that, they gain access to your personal (bank) details.

Two-step Verification

Do you want to be truly safe? Then set up two-step verification for all your accounts. This way, the security of your password becomes a lot less important. If the service does not offer two-step verification, then use an original password, or even better, a passphrase. So, not 12345678, not qwerty123, but Myc@tdrinksM3lk.

Passphrase

The most important thing about a password is its length. That’s why we often recommend using a passphrase. Come up with a password (phrase) of at least 12 characters. A password becomes stronger when you use other characters (numbers, punctuation) but length is always more important. A password of ten lower-case letters is 24 times stronger than a password of eight characters which also includes upper-case letters, numbers, and special characters.

Be Creative

Moreover, it’s important that your password is not obvious: ‘Pa$$w0rd’ seems like a strong password, but apart from being very short, it is also very predictable. A hacker will try the first 1000 obvious passwords; ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ is therefore not a good choice either. It’s hard to crack, but easy to guess because it’s at the top of the lists of common passwords. So, be creative and come up with an original passphrase, for example: Therewere3biggrazersinthemeadow! And remember, if passwords are stolen, it doesn’t matter whether you have a strong password. But if your accounts have different passwords, a hacker can’t access all your accounts at once. So make sure all your accounts have a different password!

Shall we see how quickly your password (phrase) can be cracked?

Is my password vulnerable?

Evaluate your password:

Check the strength of a password and if it was exposed in any breaches.

Your password strength:

Estimated time to crack:

Password composition

Make sure that your password is long enough and contains various types of characters.

At least 12 characters

Lowercase

Uppercase

Symbols (?#@…)

Numbers

Has this password been previously exposed in data breaches?

Note: We’ll use haveibeenpwned.com to ensure your password hasn’t been exposed in any data breaches.

Is it safe to type my real password here?

While I don’t store your password, your password will be checked against data breaches, via the service “haveibeenpwned.com“. To assess strength, you can consider checking a password similar to yours. However, it won’t provide accurate data breach exposure info.

How do you calculate password strength?

I use a tool called “zxcvbn”. Learn more here.

How do I create a strong password?

You can try the BitWarden Password Generator, here.

What’s the best way to manage my passwords?

I recommend using a password manager, like, 1Password, NordPass, Bitwarden, or mSecure. You can read more about it at Cnet and Pcmag.

Reference Notes:

You may already be aware of my collaboration with the Dutch government and their endorsement of my Information Security PubQuiz. If not, you can read about it here. Regrettably, the government education site that underpins part of my PubQuizzes is not available in English. Therefore, I’ve translated the articles from “veiliginternetten.nl” and “alertonline.nl” and you can read them on my site. The original source for this article, in Dutch, can be found here.