How long does it take a hacker to crack a password in 2024?

Updating your password to be longer and contain a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols can increase the time it takes a hacker to crack it even as password encryption measures improve, according to the IT firm Hive Systems.

The company released its 2024 password table which displays the time needed to hack a password using the best consumer-accessible hardware. The table is updated every year.

Many websites currently require a password of at least eight characters with a mix of letters, numbers, or symbols, but we might be due for an upgrade, experts say, as a longer password offers a significantly larger pool of possible combinations for hackers to guess through.

For a simple eight-character password composed only of numbers, just 37 seconds are needed to crack it using brute force, a method that employs trial and error by trying as many combinations as possible. If the number of characters is doubled, a hacker would need 119 years to determine it.

Experts advocate for longer passwords even if they are simpler. An eight-character password mixing numbers with upper and lowercase letters and symbols requires seven years to be cracked, which is still less time than what is needed to crack a 16-character password only made of numbers.

The time it takes to crack a password was longer in this year’s table as the firm analysed a more robust password encryption method.

They warned, however, that the increased time to crack a password “likely won't last as computing power increases in the coming years”.

The passwords tested by Hive Systems are also randomly generated.

If a password has been previously stolen, uses dictionary words, or if it has been reused between websites, the time needed to crack it drops dramatically.

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