Every year, Virginia-based cybersecurity company Hive Systems releases a new table of estimates showing how long it would take for a hacker to brute force passwords of various lengths and complexities. If you're still hanging onto simple passwords like "nsync99" or "bsb4eva," these stats will definitely freak you out.

Just like last year, they're throwing the processing power of twelve RTX 4090 graphics cards against a wide variety of passwords ranging from a plain four-digit password to an 18-character password with numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols. However, they have moved away from assuming passwords are hashed with MD5 to bcrypt using a Blowfish cypher. As such, the average time it takes to brute force passwords has increased.

Even so, pretty much any six-character password is cracked within a day. To reach the optimal "green" level of security, you need a password with at least 13 characters made up of numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols.

Click image to enlarge

Via Hive Systems.

[Image: cottonbro studio]