Passwords.. how good is yours?

[Linus]

With my background in computer security, I'm always looking for ways to help people realize how important some simple passwords of decent strength can be -- especially for things like bank accounts, PayPal/Amazon accounts and other critical stuff. Forums and the likes of Facebook could be just as bad (depending on information stored). At the least it can mean reputation or personal identity info release/harmed.

Length of password and how often you change it determines how strong it is. If you use the same password for 10 years, it's likely it's been broken at some point or will be soon (regardless of how strong it is -- it's always a matter of time)

Anyways, if you wanted to find out how strong your password is check out here:

http://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

At present mine is:

Online Attack Scenario:
(Assuming one thousand guesses per second)4.06 hundred million trillion centuries Offline Fast Attack Scenario:
(Assuming one hundred billion guesses per second)4.06 trillion centuries Massive Cracking Array Scenario:
(Assuming one hundred trillion guesses per second)4.06 billion centuries