They shall not pass

If you use the names of your children or pets as passwords then fear not. The most dedicated hacker is no more likely to break into your bank account if the password is Jaspertiddles than if it is J@$p0rt!d£le$. We are always being told to use a complex mishmash of capitals, numbers and symbols that can never be remembered unless they are written down, which would probably defeat the object. Bill Burr, the person responsible for the “safe” password rules in the first place, now says that instead of improving security, the combinations actually make systems more vulnerable. Easily recalled compound passwords such as “Horse-carrots-add-lestable” would take one trillion years for a cyberbot to crack, compared to one minute for “P@55w0rd”. Let’s not all use the same one, though.