TIL my old password trick was actually making things worse

For three years, I'd just add a '1' or '!' to the end of my old passwords when a site forced me to change it. Thought it was smart. Last week, a buddy showed me a simple tool that guessed that pattern in under 30 seconds. He used a free program called Hashcat on a basic laptop. It cracked my 'secure' password by just trying common words with numbers and symbols tacked on the end. Now I'm using a proper password manager to make totally random ones. Anyone else get caught by a bad habit they thought was safe?

3 comments

3 Comments

palmer.thomas2mo ago

Thirty seconds on a basic laptop? That Hashcat thing is scary. I was doing the same thing with capital letters.

faith_schmidt2mo ago

Yeah, that "thirty seconds on a basic laptop" line got me too. I tried a simple all-lowercase word list on an old computer once and it was just as fast. It really shows how weak basic passwords are. You see people using their pet's name and think, oh that's easy to guess. But seeing a tool actually do it that quick is a whole different feeling. Makes you want to go change every password right now.

reese5501mo ago

Honestly it's like that with so many things now. We all have these little life hacks that feel clever, like reusing passwords or skipping updates, but they're actually creating bigger risks. It's the same reason I finally stopped using the same PIN for everything, even though it was convenient.