45% of passwords created by users around the world could be guessed in less than a minute by experienced hackers. In any case, this is the conclusion that Kaspersky claimed this Tuesday to have drawn from the study of 193 million passwords that the Russian cybersecurity specialist unearthed on the dark web. 14% of them could also be deciphered within a period of one minute to one hour, BFM TV indicated this Thursday.
Conversely, only 19% of the protections studied were deemed effective by the company in its press release. The latter analyzed the origin of the weakness of the passwords chosen by the least cautious users. Experts found that 57% of passwords contained a word found in the dictionary, making it easier for hackers wishing to discover them.
Algorithms for cybercriminals
To achieve their goals, they are also helped by tools based on artificial intelligence. Algorithms are thus capable of testing at full speed combinations in which letters are replaced by numbers or which are formed with sequences that we often know are present in passwords, such as “azerty” or “12345”.
This, among other things, is why the best protection is not to use the same password to protect several sites or content in case one of them is guessed by cybercriminals. Kaspersky also recommends using a password generator, which guarantees random codes and therefore much more difficult to find.
