Think you’ve totally beaten the hackers with a clever alphanumeric password like p@$$w0rD!? Think again. Telepathwords can guess that one without even trying.
MIT Technology Review pointed us to the new tool, which was created by Microsoft Research in an effort to develop a weak password prevention system. Before its release yesterday, the system was tested by hundreds of Microsoft employees, according to a release from Microsoft Research.
Telepathwords tries to predict the next character of your passwords by using knowledge of:
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common passwords, such as those made public as a result of security breaches
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common phrases, such as those that appear frequently on web pages or in common search queries
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common password-selection behaviors, such as the use of sequences of adjacent keys
The more characters Telepathwords can properly guess, the weaker your password is. So even though it’s nice that you’re honoring your first pet by using his name as a password, you might want to try something a little harder to crack.
Worth noting: the site does collect the characters you type and record your mouse movements, and sends that encrypted data to Microsoft so it can be used for research purposes. Those super concerned with online privacy probably want to sit this one out.