"Why Short Passwords Are A Bad Idea"
Hi Fred! Long time subscriber here... Ran across this and knew you'd find it interesting!
This web site shows in graphic detail why not to choose a poor password: http://www.lockdown.co.uk/?pg=combi&s=articles
All the best! ---Randall
Thanks, Randall. that's a very nice, succinct summary page--- and a sobering one, too.
A different page lets you see similar cracking data in tabular form ( http://www.mcmaster.ca/uts/ITsecurity/passwordcracking.htm ) and yet another page lets you actually experiment with an interactive "password cracking calculator" ( http://lastbit.com/pswcalc.asp ) to see how long a brute force attack will take to crack a password of whatever complexity you specify. (And "brute force" is usually the longest and least efficient way of cracking a password; more sophisticated methods can be much, much faster!)
In many cases, even hard-looking passwords are barely a speedbump to heavy-duty cracking tools.
So what makes a good password that really will be hard to crack? See "How To Build Better Passwords" at http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=164303537
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