Picking a password is a tricky business. And the temptation is to go for something that is easy to remember like our partner’s birthday, a pet’s name, or a film star.
The trouble is, given just a few attempts it also makes it pretty easy to crack.
“Hackers today will often use a dictionary style attack. This means they can very quickly use all of the words in the dictionary as well as common celebrity or sports names,” explained McAfee security analyst Greg Day.
“For example, many people still use what they think is a smart technique of switching out some of those characters for numbers, for example changing an A into a 4. But that’s a very commonly known technique.”
