Artificial intelligence guesses passwords in less than a minute

Passwords are becoming more vulnerable with the advent of artificial intelligence tools
(photo: CC0 Public Domain)

Among many useful usage scenarios, andartificial intelligence, like any othera technicalologythere is and “dark side”. With its help, hackers and malicious persons can easily obtain the passwords of their victims.

The PassGAN AI model, designed specifically for cracking passwords, can crack 51% of them in less than a minute. It will take just one day to crack 71% of passwords, according to research by Home Security Heroes.

As source data, the platform uses Rockyou’s dictionary containing 15 million entries. Thanks to its unique approach, this AI can crack 51% of passwords in less than a minute, crack 65% in less than an hour, crack 71% in a day, and crack 81 in less than a month % of passwords.

The key to PassGAN’s high performance is that the model “autonomously studies the distribution of real passwords in real leaks,” notes 95to5Mac in a post about the system.

Potential victims can protect themselves from such an attack by taking some measures recommended by security experts:

• the password must be at least 12 characters long, including upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters – each new type significantly complicates the task of a hypothetical attacker;
• An 18-character mixed-type password is considered unbreakable by AI—it would take a modern system 6 quadrillion years to crack it.

Home Security Heroes specialists also recommend additional protection measures:

• use two-factor/multi-factor authentication, preferably not with SMS;
• do not use the same passwords for different accounts;
• generate passwords through automated means;
• update passwords regularly;
• refrain from using public Wi-Fi networks, especially when working with online banking and other similar services.

An AI tool that can be used to test a password against AI hacking is published on the research results page. The company claims that the data entered in this field is not recorded or transferred anywhere.