AI Can Crack 51% Of Common Passwords In Less Than A Minute: How To Stay Safe

Artificial intelligence can make many mundane tasks easier to finish through its speed and efficiency. At the same time, these redeeming factors about AI also make it a risky tool in the hands of threat actors.

According to a new report by Home Security Heroes, 51% of commonly used passwords can be cracked in less than a minute using an AI password cracker. Think your password is smarter? The report found that 81% passwords can be cracked in less than a month.

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Passwords at risk

To reach this conclusion, Home Security Heroes used the AI password cracker PassGAN; running it through a list of 15,680,000 passwords. Even without AI in the mix, your passwords are vulnerable if they're straightforward and basic - only in lowercase, devoid of numbers and special characters, etc.

Also read: Apple, Google, And Microsoft Are Killing Traditional Passwords: What Will Change?

Home Security Heroes

PassGAN was able to crack passwords with seven characters - yes, even ones containing symbols in less than six minutes. The biggest security takeaway from this is that AI takes a lot longer to crack passwords that have more characters and variety in terms of characters used. Essentially, it's advisable to have longer, versatile passwords, with less predictable arrangements and words if you wish to keep them safe from such AI crackers in the near-future.

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If your password has 14 characters comprising upper and lower case letters, AI would take 187 million years on average to crack it, as opposed to a 7-character password, that was cracked by PassGAN in less than 22 seconds.

Protecting your passwords

So what can you do to protect yourself from such tools in the future? For starters, never use a commonly known word as your password - especially your name, a city, or a locality name.

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Always add special characters and a mix of numbers and upper as well as lower case letters. Here's an example - if I kept Bharat00 as my password, it would be easily cracked by an AI tool. But if I broke it down and added some randomness into the mix, it would be hard to break through, like 04Bh&*Ar@tTt=53, for example, would be a lot harder to crack.

Also read: Google Assistant Can Now Warn Chrome Users To Change Their Stolen Passwords

You can check how strong a random password is against AI tools on the Home Security Heroes website.

What do you think about the scope of AI tools that can jeopardise your account safety? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.