A new study suggests that if your passwords aren’t at least eight characters long, you could be at risk of getting hacked.
A cybersecurity company called Hive Systems just released a new study that details how long it would take a hacker to learn your password, based on how long your password is and how many characters you use.
Let’s say you have an eight-character password with a good amount of numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and symbols, the average hacker could crack your password within eight hours, CNBC reports per Hive Systems. Suppose you have anything shorter than eight characters. In that case, a hacker could find their way into your most important accounts in a matter of minutes.
The study suggests that longer passwords are the route to go, highlighting that an 18-character password could take up to 438 trillion years for the average hacker to crack. According to the Hive Systems chart, passwords with four to six characters are the easiest to crack and could be learned in seconds.
The company also cautions people against reusing passwords for different accounts and websites, saying if a hacker ends up cracking your password for one website, then “you’re in for a bad time” as they may be able to break into another.
