NB: There are Video Tutorials supporting this eBook. Links to video tutorials are inclusive.
With bugs like Heartbleed on the rise, it is a good time to ditch personal passwords for more secure, randomized ones. 1Password helps you keep track of these hard-to-remember passwords and access them from one convenient, secure place. In this course, Abby Lotts shows you how to get the most from 1Password, even on the go. Learn how to enter login and credit card info and add secure notes for multiple users and identities. And 1Password goes beyond storage. Learn how to audit how secure your information really is and generate better passwords quickly. Abby will also show you how to sync and back up passwords, so you never lose your information, and demonstrate how the 1Password app works on iPads and iPhones.
Topics include:
• Installing 1Password
• Adding and saving passwords
• Generating secure passwords
• Adding credit card info
• Auditing your password security
• Backing up passwords
• Using 1Password on an iPad or iPhone
Basically, the password strength depends on the number of possible combinations, which must be tried in order to guess (or crack) the password. For example, the standard 4-digit PIN codes are weak passwords, because there are only 10000 possible combinations. This is not a big problem for ATM machines because the PIN code is useless without the card and most ATM machines block when the password does not match more than 2-3 times. However, in many other cases it is possible to use automated password cracking tools, which can try thousands or even millions passwords per second, so any weak password will be cracked in a matter of seconds or minutes.
The number of possible combinations depends of the symbols, which are used in the password and the password length. See the table bellow for some estimates of the time for cracking of the passwords with different complexity on 4 typical computers. The first computer is a contemporary mid-level PC, which can test 1 million passwords per second. The second is a future computer 10 years from now, which will be able to test 65 million passwords per second. The third computer is contemporary mid-level supercomputer, which can test 1 billion passwords per second and the last is a future supercomputer 10 years from now, which will be able to test 65 billion passwords per second. Please note that these are approximate estimates and the actual password testing speed may be significantly faster or slower for different types of encryption algorithms.
