In 2010, an 8-character password like Tr0ub4dor& was considered strong. In 2025, it is a joke.
Most people misunderstand how hacking works. They imagine a hacker sitting in a dark room, typing guesses one by one. That never happens. Instead, they use massive server farms powered by GPUs (the same chips used for gaming and AI) to calculate billions of hashes per second.
Here is the brutal math of why your current password is likely already compromised, and why “Length” is the only metric that matters.
1. The GPU Revolution: Speed Kills Secrecy
The enemy isn’t a human; it’s pure mathematics running on silicon. A modern consumer-grade GPU (like an RTX 4090) can make hundreds of billions of guesses per second.
If your password is 8 characters long (lowercase letters), there are about 200 billion possible combinations. To a human, that sounds like a lot. To a modern GPU rig, that takes less than 1 second to brute force.
Even if you add numbers and symbols (P@ssw0rd), an 8-character password can be cracked in minutes. The hardware has simply become too fast for short passwords to survive.
2. Complexity vs. Entropy (The XKCD Principle)
For years, IT departments forced us to create passwords that look like this:
J8&c#L2!
This is hard for a human to remember, but surprisingly easy for a computer to guess. It has high “complexity” but low “entropy” (randomness/length).
Instead, consider a passphrase made of four random common words:
correct horse battery staple
This is 28 characters long. It contains no symbols or numbers. Yet, because of its length, it would take a supercomputer millions of years to crack. It is easy for your brain to remember, but impossible for a machine to guess. This is the new standard.
3. The 12-Character Minimum
To stay ahead of the hardware curve, the new minimum standard is 12 characters. Ideally, 14 or more.
Every single character you add increases the difficulty exponentially. Adding just one character doesn’t make it “a little harder”—it makes it 70 to 90 times harder to crack.
- 8 chars: Cracked instantly.
- 10 chars: Cracked in days/weeks.
- 12 chars: Centuries (for now).
Conclusion: Don’t Trust Your Brain
Humans are terrible at being random. If asked to pick a “random” number, most people pick 7. If asked to pick a password, we use names, birthdays, or patterns on the keyboard (qwerty).
The only way to be safe is to remove your brain from the equation. Use a password manager and a random generator.
👇 Secure your account now