Sunday , June 1 2025

AI can crack half of common passwords in less than a minute

A new study by a cybersecurity firm has revealed that most commonly used passwords are vulnerable to artificial intelligence (AI) tools and can be cracked almost instantly.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have made it easier to perform tasks just by sending prompts. However, it seems these large tools are also very good at creating fresh cybersecurity concerns.

Hacker claim Leak of Deloitte Source Code & GitHub Credentials

A hacker known as "303" claim to breach the company's systems and leaked sensitive internal data on a dark web...
Read More
Hacker claim Leak of Deloitte Source Code & GitHub Credentials

CISA Issued Guidance for SIEM and SOAR Implementation

CISA and ACSC issued new guidance this week on how to procure, implement, and maintain SIEM and SOAR platforms. SIEM...
Read More
CISA Issued Guidance for SIEM and SOAR Implementation

Linux flaws enable password hash theft via core dumps in Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora

The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU) found two local information-disclosure vulnerabilities in Apport and systemd-coredump. Both issues are race-condition vulnerabilities....
Read More
Linux flaws enable password hash theft via core dumps in Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora

Australia enacts mandatory ransomware payment reporting

New ransomware payment reporting rules take effect in Australia yesterday (May 30) for all organisations with an annual turnover of...
Read More
Australia enacts mandatory ransomware payment reporting

Why Govt Demands Foreign CCTV Firms to Submit Source Code?

Global makers of surveillance gear have clashed with Indian regulators in recent weeks over contentious new security rules that require...
Read More
Why Govt Demands Foreign CCTV Firms to Submit Source Code?

CVE-2023-39780
Botnet hacks thousands of ASUS routers

GreyNoise has discovered a campaign where attackers have gained unauthorized access to thousands of internet-exposed ASUS routers. This seems to...
Read More
CVE-2023-39780  Botnet hacks thousands of ASUS routers

Bangladesh Bank instructed using AI to prevent online gambling

The rise of online gambling in the country is leading to increased crime and societal issues. In response, the central...
Read More
Bangladesh Bank instructed using AI to prevent online gambling

251 Amazon-Hosted IPs Used in Exploit Scan for ColdFusion, Struts, and Elasticsearch

Cybersecurity researchers recently revealed a coordinated cloud-based scanning attack that targeted 75 different exposure points earlier this month. On May...
Read More
251 Amazon-Hosted IPs Used in Exploit Scan for ColdFusion, Struts, and Elasticsearch

Zero-Trust Policy bypass to Exploit Vulns & Manipulate NHI Secrets

Recent security research has shown that attackers can weaken zero-trust security frameworks by exploiting a key DNS vulnerability, disrupting automated...
Read More
Zero-Trust Policy bypass to Exploit Vulns & Manipulate NHI Secrets

Evaly E-commerce Platform Allegedly Hacked

Evaly, a Bangladeshi e-commerce platform, is reportedly facing a major data breach that may have exposed sensitive information of around...
Read More
Evaly E-commerce Platform Allegedly Hacked

According to a report by Home Security Heroes, a cybersecurity company, AI can easily crack most commonly used passwords and thus pose a huge threat to people who do not bother with more intricate combinations.

For an experiment, the firm used an AI-powered password cracker, dubbed PassGAN – a shortened version of the words “Password” and “Generative Adversarial Networks” (GAN).

In all, more than 15 million commonly used passwords were checked, and the results are disturbing – though not entirely surprising.

The study has revealed that a shocking 51% of common passwords can be cracked in under a minute. This means over half of common passwords are completely insecure. Besides, 61% of passwords can be cracked in under an hour, 71% in a day, and 81% in a month.

password-list
Your passwords are not safe if they’re not complicated enough. Courtesy of Home Security Heroes.

Passwords with up to seven characters can be cracked in under six minutes, even if they incorporate symbols. A password with six characters – including those that use combinations of numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and symbols – can be cracked instantly.

So what’s safe? As per the study, passwords with more than 18 characters are ideal against AI tools – even if only numbers are used. But if you use a password this long and include numbers, lower and uppercase letters, and symbols, it would take the AI tool six quintillion (six billion billion) years to crack it.

PassGAN is a deep-learning tool for password guessing, developed by Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and the New York Institute of Technology, in 2017.

Researchers first trained a GAN to rapidly learn all the most common human password strategies – dictionary words, numerical sequences, and the like – from databases of tens of millions of known, leaked, common and complex passwords, and simple variations of them. Cybernews also has a database of suchlike available.

Researchers then took the project a notch higher, freeing up the network to create its own rules and patterns, if it so chose, from that training data.

That’s precisely what the AI did, autonomously learning the distribution of real passwords from actual leaks – thus eliminating the need for manual password analysis.

Despite security experts recommending strong and unique passwords, along with two-factor authentication and password managers, people continue using weak codes that even a novice cybercriminal could hack in a couple of moments. Never mind a dedicated AI program.

Check Also

zero-trust

Zero-Trust Policy bypass to Exploit Vulns & Manipulate NHI Secrets

Recent security research has shown that attackers can weaken zero-trust security frameworks by exploiting a …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *