Has the new password you are about to set already been Pwned? One way to find out is to download the 5.3GB database of 306 million passwords that are known to have been compromised (Pwned) in data breaches. If you don’t have time to trawl the list and who does? Then Troy Hunt at ‘Have I Been Pwned’ has created an interesting search tool to save you the legwork.
We had some ‘fun’ in the Authlogics office this week typing in passwords and worrying (yet not altogether unsurprising) we found in our brief search that there were more flagged as Pwned than not. Of course, we didn’t test any passwords we currently have in use and we tried some random and not so random combinations, including what some would call ‘strong passwords’.
Take a look for yourself. If you are not yet convinced that passwords have had their day, you soon will be…