Yeah, no. Computers don’t care if a password is complex or not. It can’t read “words”. That complexity stuff was introduced because humans think like humans, and wanted to force people to use words not easily found in a dictionary. Security is about password length, so +@#£h&1g/?!:h&£( is equally as vulnerable to a brute force attack as abcdefgh1234567 because of how modern encryption works, it I length that counts.
It is good advice to use a formula to build memorable passwords. I like a simple sentence you can type them without thinking about, as this also won’t appear in a dictionary (avoid famous movie quotes, use something meaningful to you).
Fact is complex passwords created a new security risk; the written down password. Also, frequent forced password changes made it worse. Most businesses only ask staff to change passwords every 3 to 6 months these days. And web sites.never asks you to change your password.
The dirty (not so secret) secret is that, the biggest risk to security is not how complex your password is, but how easy it is to trick people into just giving away access to their accounts.
These days MFA is what makes logon credentials safer and passkeys are slowly proving that passwords themselves are not worth it for most systems.
tl;dr - complex passwords are a throwback and not better than long memorable ones like 1Verycrappycode!
Yeah, no. Computers don’t care if a password is complex or not. It can’t read “words”. That complexity stuff was introduced because humans think like humans, and wanted to force people to use words not easily found in a dictionary. Security is about password length, so +@#£h&1g/?!:h&£( is equally as vulnerable to a brute force attack as abcdefgh1234567 because of how modern encryption works, it I length that counts.
It is good advice to use a formula to build memorable passwords. I like a simple sentence you can type them without thinking about, as this also won’t appear in a dictionary (avoid famous movie quotes, use something meaningful to you).
Fact is complex passwords created a new security risk; the written down password. Also, frequent forced password changes made it worse. Most businesses only ask staff to change passwords every 3 to 6 months these days. And web sites.never asks you to change your password.
The dirty (not so secret) secret is that, the biggest risk to security is not how complex your password is, but how easy it is to trick people into just giving away access to their accounts.
These days MFA is what makes logon credentials safer and passkeys are slowly proving that passwords themselves are not worth it for most systems.
tl;dr - complex passwords are a throwback and not better than long memorable ones like 1Verycrappycode!