How long would it take to crack your password?
Thankfully the days of organizations storing passwords in plain text are pretty much gone. Most are now hashed using algorithms that prevent hackers from reading the database easily.
But, as new research from Specops Software reveals, that doesn't necessarily make things safe. The quality of the password itself has a big impact on how long it will take to crack.
Kaspersky Password Manager was generating incredibly easily cracked passwords
A need for security means that many people rely on password managers to store their ever-growing collection of login credentials. And when the time comes to create a new user account, many such tools offer a password generator to help with the creation of something ultra-secure.
Or at least that's the idea. Security consultancy Donjon found that between March 2019 and October 2020 Kaspersky Password Manager was generating passwords that could be cracked in seconds. The tool was using a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) that was singularly unsuitable for cryptographic purposes.