Examples of Weak and Strong Passwords
These Are the Best Passwords to Secure Your Account
A good password isn't necessary synonymous with one that's easy to remember. "Good," in this context, is strong. You want a super strong password so that it's more resistant to guessing and so that it's unlikely to be found in a brute force dictionary hack.
Hackers and computer intruders use automated software as a way to submit hundreds of guesses per minute to open your account. The tools use lists of dictionary words to sequentially guess the password, and some will even add common symbols, numbers or signs that it thinks you may have added to the word to make it more complex.
Tip: See these steps for making a strong password so you can change your basic password into something much harder to guess. Once you have one, store it in a password manager so you never forget it.
Examples of Bad Passwords
Any dictionary hacking tool that uses an English dictionary list can easily find words that are contained in that dictionary. If the simple word doesn't work, the tool most likely modifies the submission to try other iterations of the same word.
We can see this example with the word Dog:
| Dog | Dogs | Dogcatcher |
| Dogberry | Dogberries | Dogma |
| Dogmatic | Dogmatized | Dog1 |
| Dog2 | Dog3 | Dog4 |
Password-guessing tools can submit hundreds or thousands of words per minute, so if your password is anything close to a dictionary word, it's highly likely that it's extremely insecure. The less that your password resembles regular word patterns, the longer it will take for a repetition tool to guess it.
How to Make Your Password More Secure
Consider the examples below. What you're looking at is a progression of complexity starting off with a very simply password and moving to one that's much more complex.
In the first column are simple words that don't take much remembering and could probably be found with a good dictionary attack.
In the second column is a slight modification to the first, and the final column gives an example of how the original, simple password can be maintained but converted into something much harder to figure out.
| OK Password | Better Password | Excellent Password |
| kitty | 1Kitty | 1Ki77y |
| susan | Susan53 | .Susan53 |
| jellyfish | jelly22fish | jelly22fi$h |
| smellycat | sm3llycat | $m3llycat |
| allblacks | a11Blacks | a11Black$ |
| usher | !usher | !ush3r |
| ebay44 | ebay.44 | &ebay.44 |
| deltagamma | deltagamm@ | d3ltagamm@ |
| ilovemypiano | !LoveMyPiano | !Lov3MyPiano |
| Sterling | SterlingGmal2015 | SterlingGmail20.15 |
| BankLogin | BankLogin13 | BankLogin!3 |
Below are some other examples of password variations that purposely avoid using complete English word patterns.
By injecting numbers and special characters instead of letters, these passwords will take exponentially longer for a dictionary program to guess.
- Dog.lov3r
- dOG.lov3r
- i7ovemydog!!
- d0gsaremybestfr13nds
- sn00pdoggyd0G
- Karm@beatsDogm@
- C@ts-and-Dogs-Living-together
Are you ready to create your secure password? Try our free random password generator now.
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Paul Gil wrote the original article.
Source: lifewire.com