To explain the brute force concept in a few words. It basically is a method to try every possible combination until the right password has been discovered. Passwords that use lots of characters and make use of the complete char set including upper case, lower case, numbers and special chars are harder to brute force.

The Brute Force Calculator lets you enter the amount of chars of the password divided into upper case, lower case, numbers and special characters.

According to the script a single computer can brute force a password consisting of seven lower case chars and one number in 29 minutes while a password consisting of 7 upper case, 7 lower case, 1 number and 1 special char would take 3,129,145,610.89 days to crack on a single machine.

All based on a computer that is able to try 137,438,953,472 combinations per hour. The script is basically interesting for users who are still using short passwords who do not make use of the complete character set possible. It shows them that someone could crack their password in a short amount of time not even taking into consideration using distributed computing to brute force the password.

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• The average length of time users have maintained their primary personal use password was reported as 31.07 months
• How frequently do you change your password on a regular basis when not required by the system?â€? 52.7% (166) responded “Neverâ€?

• 85.7% (270) reported that they use lowercase letters and 56.5% (178) reported that they use numbers or digits in their passwords. In addition, 54.9% (173) indicated that they use personally meaningful words, such as names of children, pets or street names, while 49.8% (156) indicated that they use personally meaningful numbers, such as birthdates or telephone numbers
• 54.6% of users (177) report using the same exact password for multiple accounts “Very Frequentlyâ€? or “Alwaysâ€?, while 33.0% (104) report using some variation of the same password for multiple accounts
• 73% (230) of respondents reported that they should change their passwords for accounts every three to six months, but 52.7% (166) responded that they “Neverâ€? change their password when not required.
• 70.5% (222) of respondents indicated that personally meaningful words should not be used, but 49.8% (156) reported that they use this practice.

So, what´s the lesson we learn from this stufy ? Users have to be forced to create passwords that meet certain security standards. I hate the IT section at my workplace because they force you to change the passwords regulary, use upper / lowercase, numbers and chars. The new password is not allowed to match with the nine previous ones, is not allowed to have repeated chars and not allowed to have logic sequences (123456, eee, sort of things).

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