People Over 55 Pick More Secure Passwords
A new study shows that 55-year-olds pick passwords that are twice as secure as 25-year-olds' passwords, according to a report from FoxNews.com.
The study, composed by University of Cambridge computer scientist Joseph Bonneau, says that there is a general trend towards better password selection with users' age. The study, the largest ever of password security, was presented at the 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the article says.
Bonneau's larger conclusion, however, was that no one makes passwords secure enough, regardless of age.
"The most troubling finding of our study is how little password distributions seem to vary ... with effective security varying by no more than a few bits," he wrote.
On average, Bonneau found that it would only take around 1,000 attempts to try every possible password combination and eventually crack them, even counting randomly chosen six-character passwords with digits, upper- and lower-case letters.
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