AI can crack your password, here’s how to protect yourself

The use of artificial intelligence has exploded in the past few months. While it has always existed in the background, ChatGPT and other AI tools have brought it to the forefront. Security experts have issued a warning about the use of artificial intelligence and why it poses a cybersecurity risk. Now, a new study demonstrates that AI is capable of cracking passwords with relative simplicity.

According to a study by Home Security Heroes, artificial intelligence can break nearly 51 percent of all common passwords in less than one minute. In addition, 65% of prevalent passwords were broken in less than an hour, while 81% of passwords were broken in less than a month.

How to keep your passwords safe

According to the security research firm, the simplest passwords to crack are digit-only ones. Even a 10-character password consisting solely of digits is nearly hackable.

"A ten-letter password with only lowercase letters would take an hour to crack, while a ten-letter password with mixed case would require four weeks," the report stated. It could take five years to decipher a ten-character strong password consisting of letters, symbols, and digits if it is composed of these elements.

The company ran a list of 15,680,000 passwords through an artificial intelligence password cracker called PassGAN and then published the results.

The company also provided a list of factors that make passwords difficult to compromise:

• Use at least 15 characters.

• Have at least two letters (upper and lower-case), numbers, and symbols in the password.

• Avoid obvious password patterns, even if they have all the required character lengths and types.