Science | Science Experiment of the Week 13 | 332 - What's the Password?

Hacking, Security Combinations, Computer Programs - How easy would it be for someone to guess your password?

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This Week's Experiment - #332 What's the Password?

These experiments are from Robert Krampf - The Happy Scientist

And I thought the "psychic love line" ads were bad. By now you probably know that the group was hacked. They got into the Yahoo groups account, not my computer. They posted offensive e-mails and then left. According to the news, there was a contest this weekend, to see who could hack and deface the most sites. I am afraid that we were one of their targets. I have changed all my passwords and am working with Yahoo to prevent this in the future. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is becoming more common.

This week's experiment is a result of the hacking. Maybe it would irritate them to know that their attempt to create outrage turned into a teaching opportunity. I have spent quite a bit of the past 24 hours researching security, trying to prevent this in the future. I found that one of the best things you can do is make a good password, so lets take a look at the science of passwords.

What is your password? No! Don't tell me! Just think about it. How easy would it be for someone to guess? Let's find out.

To start, have a friend pick a number in the range of 0 to 9. Now you try to guess it. You could guess randomly, or you could just start at one end and work your way towards the other. Is it 0? Is it 1? Is it 2? You might get lucky and get it the first try. At most, it would take you 10 tries.

That was pretty easy. Now, have your friend pick a 2 digit number, in the range from 00 to 99. How many tries would it take you to guess this time? Well, you would still have ten choices for the first digit. You would also have ten choices for the second. 10 X 10 = 100. That gives us 100 choices.

As we increase the number of digits, we make it harder to guess the number. A three digit number gives us 1000 choices. (10 X 10 X 10) An 8 digit number gives us 100,000,000 choices. Still, with a computer program doing the guessing, it would only take a very short time to guess an 8 digit number. With modern technology, we need a way to make this harder to figure out.

To do that, we add in letters. Go back to a 1 digit number, but this time, it can be in the range of 0 to 9, or in the range of A to Z. This time, instead of 10 choices, we have 36 (10 numbers and 26 letters). With a two digit number, we now have 1296 possible choices (36 X 36), instead of the 100 from our first try. That is better. Now, for an 8 digit password, we have 2,821,109,907,456 choices! Much better.

That is about as far as some systems will let you go. For more security, some systems let you use upper and lower case letters. That is like doubling the number of letters, so then you would have 52 letters and 10 numbers for each digit in the password. Some systems let you use special characters, such as #, $, %, etc. That adds even more possibilities. The more possible combinations you have in your password, the harder it is to find the right combination.

To get as much security as you can, pick a password that is as long as your system allows. Include a mix of letters and numbers. If your system allows, also use upper and lower case, as well as special characters. Be sure not to use real words. There are dictionary programs that try words instead of individual letters. If your password contains a word or words found in the dictionary, then these programs can guess much quicker.

So how are you going to remember this meaningless string of characters? Many sites suggest that you pick a sentence or phrase. For example, "My grandmother is 98 years old!" would give us MGi98yo! That gives a fairly good, eight digit password. It makes things a little more difficult, but it is well worth the effort to avoid the mischief makers lurking out there.

Have a great week.

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