Different passwords. How to come up with a complex password that is easy to remember? Examples of complex and simple passwords

Any person who uses the Internet has probably more than once encountered the need to come up with and set passwords: for logging into email, for account on the forum, for online banking. And in almost every registration form you are advised to come up with a strong password. After all, the confidentiality of your correspondence, the safety of your funds, and the security of your computer as a whole depend on how complex your secret word or phrase is. The question arises: how to come up with complex password?

How to come up with a strong password

Length. The recommended minimum length for a strong password is 8 characters. It is believed that cracking passwords of 8 or more characters by brute force is too much long process and the chances of an attacker finding such a combination are too small.

Register. Good password must contain both lowercase and uppercase letters.

Special characters. An extremely secure password, along with letters and numbers, also contains special characters. For example #, ~,+, _

In total, the ideal option would be a combination of upper and lower case Latin letters, numbers and special characters with a total length of at least 8 characters. For example:

uE_xm932
9203Jb#1
29Rtaq!2

Which should never be used as a password

Never use: as a password or secret word:

• dates of birth
  The biggest stupidity is to set your own date of birth in the format 12071992 as a password for your VKontakte page, where the same date is indicated in the information :)
• phone numbers
  A password consisting of your phone number will not be cracked only by the lazy. And here it doesn’t matter how many numbers there are :)
• names, surnames, animal names
  It's funny when people consider a mother's maiden name to be a magically reliable protection. ...which the whole yard has known for 50 years :)
• and of course, all sorts of nonsense like “qwerty123”, “password”, “password”, “********”, “123”, “12345678”, “fyva”, “asdf”, etc. By the way, the leader among secretaries’ passwords is “one”, i.e. one single digit “1” :)

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say - do not neglect your safety. Do not use the same secret words for authorization on different sites and services, no matter how complex and reliable they may be. If you have one password for everything, everywhere, then by hacking one site, attackers can gain access to all your online accounts, which means they can see information on yours, use saved credentials in the browser and other information. And remember: there is nothing more permanent than temporary. Therefore, do not be lazy to come up with strong combinations and set complex passwords straightaway- don’t put this off for later. Let your information be available only to you! Good luck!

In general, I’m glad that you came to this page, because as I understand it, you were looking for complex passwords for VK on the Internet, which means you were thinking about the security of your social network account.

And this cannot but rejoice, it’s high time, users, long time ago! If it seems to you that the password is complex, that it’s like your mother’s name, and then two numbers from her year of birth and the number of your month of birth, or something like that - this is all nonsense, believe me.

But why? And the whole point is that no matter what password you come up with, if you can remember it, then it can be hacked. There are, of course, rare cases, but we won’t talk about them.

All the passwords that can be remembered have long been in the database of hackers who, attention (!), select passwords automatically for days, without stopping! They have already perfected everything, they have a network of computers that do this every now and then, and everything is thought out there so that the administration does not find out about it.

It’s just that there is not much attention to ordinary users - they are mostly hacked on demand, or if there are other “financial” reasons for this.

I can give you a guarantee that if you have a complex password for a contact, then no one will ever hack you, of course, I also mean the absence of any viruses on the computer, but this is no longer related to passwords, here you need to be more attentive.

Well, if you also have a connection to your phone, then this is generally iron-clad protection.

Want an example? Ok, but this is not a contact, but an ICQ. I have an ICQ number, very rare and short, in general it’s easy to remember and it probably costs $50-$100, and if you find a password for it, you can hack it and sell it.

But I myself don’t remember the password, I changed it five years ago, and haven’t changed it since then, and that’s because the password is very complex. But there are no viruses on the computer and there haven’t been and I don’t think there will be, that’s the whole secret.

See How to create a complex password? Write any set of symbols and numbers in a text notepad, preferably both large and small letters. Length - from 8 to 12, more than enough.

Now look, here are examples of complex passwords:

jfl7FLS90SJ

89FNAss90z

ZZgkdf5N

LLmxdks99

Well, is it very difficult? That’s right, it’s not difficult, but remembering them on your own is difficult. No matter how difficult it is =)

What to do? Create one password, for example, which you will use on not very “important” sites, so use it, just write it down somewhere in advance, for example in your phone (in a draft SMS), unless of course no one can read it =)

And again, believe me, a complex password that even you can’t remember is the best protection. All the easy passwords and all the words and their combinations, and everything that you can remember in terms of a password - all this is already in the database of those who constantly hack accounts!

2015 began with Julia writing some materials for paranoids. I have no idea how this happened. But since it’s in the cards, today I will share with you information about the most popular user passwords in the past year. And if you find yours among this set of numbers and letters, know that it’s time to change it urgently!

And despite the fact that the digital blog “123456” still holds the palm in the list of the most not only bad, but common, and therefore unreliable passwords, the company SplashData has published its annual list of objectionable passwords. On January 20, the company’s speakers gave a presentation in California, and it seems to me that it was both witty and very serious. Surely, when they saw the list of the most popular passwords, security specialists laughed very loudly at human naivety. In order to keep your information safe and electronic wallets on lock, does not necessarily acquire wonderful devices. Just use passwords. And not the simplest. And you don’t need to set the same password for all accounts, from unlocking your computer to your Facebook account.

Actually, the list of the 25 most popular passwords looks like this:

• 123456
• 12345 – became more popular by 17 (!) points
• 12345678
• qwerty
• 123456789
• 1234 – became more popular by 9 points
• baseball – new
• dragon – new
• football – new
• 1234567
• monkey – became more popular by 5 points
• letmein
• abc123 – has become less popular by 9 points, which is good
• 111111 – became less popular by 8 points, that’s good
• mustang – new
• access – new
• shadow
• master – new
• michael – new
• superman – new
• 696969 – new
• 123123 – became less popular by 12 points, that’s good
• batman – new
• trustno1

Using one of these passwords to protect your device is the same as if you didn’t put any password on it at all. During the year, more than 3.3 million passwords were leaked. And the user error report was actually based on this data. The 25 most used passwords account for 2.2% of unsecured passwords. And, as Mark Burnett, a security specialist, notes, this is the lowest percentage in the company's four years of operation.

• if it is not possible to protect your gadget with a fingerprint, use a password. Always use it.
• If you have many accounts and devices that require a password, do not set the same one for everyone. It is better to use a data storage application service, PasswordBox for example.
• Do not use digital passwords exclusively. It is better that it contains letters, numbers, signs, and also in different registers.
• passwords based on simple keyboard patterns (such as QWERTYUIOP or 1QAZ2WSX) are very easy to calculate, they are wildly popular because they are remembered by mechanical memory.
• do not use your hobbies when creating passwords - football and baseball are new words this year, but still.
• say “NO!” year and date of birth in your password. And also the dates of important days in your life, such as the birth of children, third divorce or mother-in-law’s birthday.
• do not use the names of family and friends.
• and yes - the names of popular artists and athletes, names of brands and films, as well as popular expressions are also included in the list of “bad” passwords, albeit in a more extended version.

So be vigilant and creative. And if you are too creative, and there are so many accounts that you can’t remember them all, write down the passwords in a document called “DOCUMENT WITH IMPORTANT PASSWORDS” and everyone will be happy! (of course not). Nothing was said about this in the report, but I will still clarify - write down passwords from bank card in a notebook that you constantly carry with you, taking pictures and storing in a gallery, writing on a napkin and sticking it on the refrigerator or on a business card and putting it in your wallet is NOT WORTH it. For this, there are password messengers or limitless palaces of the mind where they should be stored. And if you haven’t looked yet, we reminded you of a couple of basic rules of conduct on the Internet that we sometimes forget about:

The Internet today occupies an important place in the life of any person. As a rule, for full-fledged work or simply to use resources, registration is required, which implies password usage. Passwords are also required to pay various bills, confirm actions, etc. The resource for which a password is created can be either important (Internet banking, for example) or not very important (if it gets hacked, no big deal). Simple password Not suitable for sites storing funds. Let's look further at how to come up with a strong, correct password that won't be hacked.

So, few people guess passwords today - as a rule, brute force is used. Using a special program, various combination options are sorted out. The first combinations to be checked are sets like “111111”, “123456”, “qwerty”, etc. Next, a simple substitution is made. Such a program can sort through a huge number of different combinations in the shortest possible time.

If the password is your date of birth or just a set of numbers, for example "25061980", the program will decrypt it in 2 seconds. On personalized passwords, which begin with a small letter (olga, roman) are cracked in 4 seconds. It will take approximately 4 minutes to password decryption, which capitalizes names. A complex combination like “1d2d3s4a8c” will require 4 days to decrypt, a password like “HSU5-BHJDa” will take 12 years, but the program will recognize such a password “IkRn%Kmbl253NNp” only in a million years, that is, never.

So that come up with the correct password, you must adhere to the following basic rules:

1. Passwords should not be short. At least 8 characters, preferably 10 or more.

2. It is imperative to use both numbers and letters. Even better is to dilute the combination with symbols and punctuation marks.

3. Correct password must contain both uppercase and lowercase letters.

It is worth noting that password is hacked not just the program. This can be done manually if you know enough about the person. For example, butfors will be about 100 thousand years recognize password"ivanovkostya". But if you have knowledge about a person, you can select a password manually in an hour or two. Moreover, last name, first name, date of birth are usually checked first.

Another way find out the password- is to choose the answer to the “secret question”. Just click on the "Forgot your password?" button. and in a few seconds (if you have information about the person) select a security question. Usually they use primitive data that is really easy to find: mother’s maiden name, favorite dish, animal name, etc.

Where do attackers get information? The answer is very logical and lies in an accessible plane: usually on social networks. If the attacker has set himself a goal crack password, he can freely use information from social networks. Therefore, Vanya Ivanov, who uses the password “ivanivanov” to log into the social network, should definitely change it immediately, otherwise his friends will very quickly see an incredible amount of spam on his behalf. Thus, password hacking- it's not as difficult as it might seem.

Now let's look at what needs to be done to correct password was selected as efficiently as possible (taking into account the previously specified requirements):

1. You should not use personal information in your password: date of birth, wedding, phone numbers, etc.

2. The answer to the “secret question” should not be simple and easy to guess. There is no need to use information that is easy to find out.

Password generation and methods of remembering.

To select the correct password quite usable password generation. This service is very affordable. You can easily choose a combination that is not easy to recognize. There is, however, one pitfall here: a complex combination is difficult to remember. Rare combinations are difficult to remember. Let's look further at how to make sure you don't forget or lose your password.

In most cases, when password generation the same combination is used. Sometimes the password is updated and comes out something like "parol1", "parol2", etc. This is a tricky step, but you can be sure that the password will not be forgotten.

When using a password generator, the result is a meaningless and illogical set of characters. It needs to be stored somewhere. Interestingly, many people have the habit of writing it down on a piece of paper and sticking it on the monitor. For example, in an office where there are many employees, clients and random people. With the same success, you can create a file on your desktop called “my passwords”. The effect will be the same.

So, here are some general tips for storing and remembering passwords:

1. It is better to create a new unique password for each resource.

2. There is no need to store password combinations on your computer desktop - hackers can easily break into your PC.

3. The password does not need to be kept in plain sight.

4. If the password is written down on a piece of paper, you need to create a copy of it.

5. No need to enter passwords in “strange” or suspicious sites or programs. Portal administrations never require you to provide them with a password - it is used only for login.

6. If a special program is used to store passwords, you need to create a copy of it.

And finally, about the correct password.

Finally, a few useful tips. IN gaming clubs or Internet cafe, enter passwords as rarely as possible. These are other people's computers, so so-called spyware can be used: they easily remember combinations that are entered from the keyboard.

If you still had to log in from someone else’s computer or use password not only at home, but also at work or in another place, always log out of the resource (don’t just close the tab, but click “Exit”) and do not click “Remember me”. Otherwise, anyone can come in even without password guessing. It’s unfortunate, but even serious electronic fund exchange portals are famous for this: they have a “Remember” function, although it shouldn’t exist, and the session should be limited.

Passwords sometimes need to be changed. True, the more reliable it is, the less often it needs to be changed. A password of 12 - 14 characters can be changed every few years.

Using all the recommendations in this article, you can easily create correct password, which no one can hack. As a rule, in the old fashioned way, passwords are written down in notebooks - in this case, notebooks should not be accessible to a wide range of people. Over time, you can remember even a large and complex combination - depending on how often you work with it.

The point of such mobile gadgets, which are fashionable today, is partly that they can access the necessary resource anywhere there is an Internet connection. At the same time, there is no need to go to an Internet cafe or club, where they can easily scan password. But you should also log out of your account for security reasons. In general, these simple recommendations can completely protect against password hacking.

Need to work immediately with several companies, which means you need to register with each and use a strong password. For social networks, for example, it won’t hurt either good protection... In general, the topic is more than relevant, so today we’ll talk about what the password will be quite complex for hackers, how to remember it, and also how to store many complex passwords convenient and in a safe place.

How hackers crack passwords

I immediately remember the series “Sherlock” (season 4 in January, hurray-hurray), where our brilliant detective, in just a few attempts, was able to unravel a very non-trivial password on Irene Adler’s phone:

If she had chosen any random combination of four letters and numbers, it’s unlikely that even Sherlock Holmes would have succeeded. In general, filmmakers love to insert such scenes (remember any other movie with password guessing), but the most interesting thing is that this kind of thing actually works in real life. This hacking method is called logical guessing— and is based on known information about the user.

If the attacker knows first name, last name and date of birth- in a few minutes he can go through possible combinations and crack a password that uses this information. Well, you probably use at least one of these? :)

By the way, do you know what passwords are found? more often? I found this sign online with examples of the most popular passwords:

As you can see, these are mostly simple combinations of numbers and letters. The frequency is not indicated here, but let’s say at least 1% of users use a primitive password 123456 — how many accounts can a hacker hack on a large service? What if we run through all known popular passwords? That's it...

By the way, there are special password dictionaries that can be downloaded from the Internet. Fortunately, popular sites have long required users to at least minimally complicate the input data - use upper and lowercase letters, at least a couple of numbers, and check that the password is not in the same dictionaries.

However, this may not be enough if the hacker has large resources and special programs. The so-called brute force method allows you to guess passwords by simply trying them all possible combinations, modern computer capabilities completely allow this.

The more different characters are used (uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, dots/dashes/commas, etc.) and the longer the password, the more time it will take the computer to check everything possible options. How much? Let's say the password uses only lowercase english letters and numbers, then the situation is like this:

As you can see, a password of less than 7 characters can be cracked in one day, and a 7-character password can be broken in a week, and if the hacker is lucky, even faster. In general, this is what password complexity looks like for the brute force method; I think the conclusions are obvious.

However, even if you create a good, complex password, there are bypass ways to hack it. For example, a letter arrives in the mail with a phrase like “to withdraw money, send your password for verification”, of course you do this under no circumstances should! Administration of any website or service never will not ask for your password, they already have it in the database.

Another way to get a password is to somehow “snoop” it. As a child, when I went to a computer club, this was a real problem - there were a lot of people around and entering the password for your game account without anyone spying on it was not easy. There have been cases of theft of game currency and items :)

Attackers can also hijack your computer Trojan program, which records what you type on the keyboard. To protect against such an attack, of course, you need to use antivirus.

Well, now you know the most simple ways hacking your data. How to protect yourself from them and create a complex and reliable password?

How to create and remember a strong password

As we have already found out, the password length must be at least 8 characters, and it is very desirable that it use different types characters:

• lowercase letters - a,b,c…;
• capital letters - A, B, C…;
• numbers - 0,1,2…;
• punctuation marks - comma, dash, question mark, etc.;
• special characters — @, #, $, %, etc.

You can check the password complexity, for example, on the Kaspersky Lab website, it looks pretty lively:

You don't have to create a password manually, there are a lot of sites where you can do this, just enter search engine request “password generator” - you will get a large list. Of course, the question arises: does a particular site record entered passwords? Even if so, you still need to know the login, and it is not known where you will use the resulting combination.

To still calm your paranoia, you can generate a password on the site, and then change a few characters in it - the complexity will not change, and the risk of brute-force hacking will still be very low.

There is only one problem with generated passwords - it’s quite difficult to remember at least one, but ideally Each site needs a unique one. One of the best ways make it easier for yourself - use words in your native language in the English layout, diluting them with numbers and signs.

Here is an example of an easy-to-remember, but very high-quality password. Let’s take the Russian noun “iron” and the logically unrelated verb “green”. As numbers, let's say there will be the year of birth of the famous writer - Leo Tolstoy, 1828. Well, let's spice it up with an exclamation point!

Let's mix it up a little and we get the following password: en.u18!ptktyttn28. I wrote down Russian words using the English layout, divided the year of birth into 2 parts and put an exclamation mark at the end of each word. It seems to be nothing complicated, but the password turns out to be of very high quality:

You can come up with other similar ways to create a password - they will all give excellent results. However, this still does not help to follow the rule 1 site - 1 password, it’s difficult to remember more than five combinations and not start using them several times. It turns out that you need a place to store important data.

Programs for storing passwords

Separately, I would like to say that writing it down on a piece of paper and sticking it to the monitor is a so-so idea :)

You can, for example, write down passwords in a notebook, but this is not very convenient - you need to enter the password manually every time and also carry it with you everywhere. And anyone who sees you looking at a notebook and entering something on the computer will quickly understand what’s what and may try to steal it.

Still, it is more practical, in my opinion, to use a specialized program for storing passwords. Firstly, they can be stored directly in the browser— after the first introduction you are asked whether you need to save or not:

This is quite convenient, and accessing the storage is not so easy - the main thing is to update the browser on time, vulnerabilities are constantly being eliminated. Of course, there are also disadvantages - if someone else uses the computer, he can easily use the saved passwords.

It is quite possible to store not particularly important data in the browser - from some accounts on forums or free services, hacking which will not cause you much harm.

More valuable data should be stored with at least additional security measures. There is a special extension for browsers LastPass, which does roughly the same thing as the browser itself, but better. The vault itself can be locked with a password; you will need to come up with just one using the “green iron” method and remember it.

The disadvantage of LastPass is that your passwords are still on third-party servers, and if they are hacked (and stories of hacking of major corporations indicate that no one is safe), the data will leak to the attackers.

I had a more inspiring experience working with a regular Windows password storage program - KeepPass. It is free and based on open source, which means many programmers have checked it and have not found hidden tricks that allow data to be stolen.

It is English-speaking, perhaps this is the only negative that I have found so far. The meaning is this - all passwords are in a database that is protected separate password and the key file:

The Master Password should be very complex, but since there is only one, it is easier to remember. The password database looks like this:

I have several groups of passwords - Mail, Forex, Social Networks, etc., each of them stores different entries. In principle, everything is quite simple, especially if you know English.

You would probably like to receive detailed instructions on using KeePass. Let's do this - if at least 5 different people in the comments he will ask you to write an article or ask something about a program for storing passwords, I will assume that the audience is interested and will do it next week :)

And that's all! So you found out basics of creating and storing strong passwords. Let's check how things are going with Webinvest readers :) We need a site that everyone can use... I think social media will do. So, I ask you to use the poll to tell us how complex the password you use for your favorite social network is:

I hope that after my article the situation will improve. Especially if you help spread the article among your friends and colleagues:

Friends, in general, do you take passwords responsibly? Or do you think that you shouldn’t worry too much, the hassles aren’t worth it and you can get by with fairly simple ones? Leave your opinions in the comments.

See you in new articles from Webinvest! Winter is coming... please don't get sick.

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