Yes, 100%. The process of reverse engineering the password, known as brute force, is the hacker using a program to try every possible combination of characters to come up with the password. Essentially, the program creates a combination of characters as a possible password. Runs it through the hash function used to hash the passwords and then compares the output to the stolen hashed password. Once they find a match they know what the password is. A longer password means there are more possible combinations which means it takes longer to try them. As computing power grows this time comes down meaning password length has to grow.Thanks for your response - I had to lookup some of this stuff. So you are saying that hackers gain access to hashed passwords by somehow breaking into a server - and then try to reverse engineer the actual passwords? And the process of reverse engineering passwords is more difficult the longer the passwords are? Correct?
A hacker may also use other techniques involving lists of known/common passwords and words to help bring down this time as well. This is why it's important to use a long and unique password. A password manager generated password generally guarantees this to be true.
Statistics: Posted by PersonalFinanceJam — Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:33 pm — Replies 18 — Views 1134