When it comes to password security, longer is typically better and multi-word pass phrases are even better than that. But if you find yourself with an annoying, fixed-length password, try mixing up the characters in it.
As Reddit user GentleRhino reminds us, tacking on a few extra numbers to the end of some regular words is bad password form. However, mixing those numbers into the words increases complexity.
For example the password “lifehacker1234567890” would take less than two seconds to crack according to Intel’s password testing tool here. However, “l1i2f3e4h5a6c7k8e9r0” would take roughly 4,690,072,166 years. While it’s not perfect, this trick can help add complexity without making it harder to remember, particularly for password fields that are needlessly limited in length.
Comments
One response to “Use Mixed Entry To Increase Length-Capped Password Complexity”
How the hell would “lifehacker1234567890” take “less than 2 seconds” to crack? If someone was trying to brute force that specific password, and didn’t know the character length, or requirements, it would take years! Even if they knew how many characters it was, theres still millions of combinations 20 characters can make up, you, or actually intel, think it can be cracked in 2 seconds? I say ROFL to that my good sir. I also noticed on Intels tool, no matter what combination I placed the numbers, the time remained the same – 47 seconds.