PSPINC CEO Kenichi Uchikura's Blog

Characters That Can Be Typed on a Keyboard and Password Complexity

 

Below is a list of characters that can be typed using a standard keyboard:

 

1234567890-=  
!@#$%^&*()_+  
qwertyuiop[]\  
QWERTYUIOP{}|  
asdfghjkl;'  
ASDFGHJKL:"  
zxcvbnm,./  
ZXCVBNM<>?  
While some characters, such as spaces, may not be allowed in passwords, the 92 characters listed above are typically used as the basis for password combinations.

 

Examples of Password Combinations
The number of possible password combinations increases exponentially with the length of the password. For example:

 

Up to 8-character passwords
The total number of possible combinations is 5,188,586,409,742,380.
If a computer capable of testing 10,000 combinations per second were to attempt all possible combinations, it would take:

 

16,452 years, 328 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, and 14 seconds

 

Up to 12-character passwords
Testing all combinations at the same speed (10,000 attempts per second) would require:

 

1,178,674,142,659,000,000 years, 196 days, 4 hours, 30 minutes, and 56 seconds

 

Conclusion
This illustrates just how challenging it is to crack a password generated with random characters. The longer the password, the more secure it becomes due to the exponential increase in combinations. To protect sensitive data, it’s crucial to create strong, random, and lengthy passwords.