The image of website hackers as nerdy teens is an outdated image. Today’s human hackers not only may belong to an organization or network but may also have purchased well-designed hacking software that is bundled with actual customer support. One of the more popular hacking techniques is a brute force program that guesses passwords, millions per second, based upon the dictionary. My sites receive thousands of hacking attempts a day! For this reason, any passwords that are made up of actual words or searchable terms are weak choices and should be updated. When you create a WordPress password be sure to use random and unique passwords. If any of your current passwords are weak upgrade them immediately.
Take a look at some of these true random passwords generated by Random.org. This will give you an idea of how unfamiliar a password should look. If you Google for information on how to create a password you will find outdated information that suggests phrases, names, numbers such as 2013. One of my best techniques is to select the phrase … I like to swim in the ocean.. and then edit it to something like… iL2SiT*O. Random, long, characters are the guidelines that produce hard-to-break and hopefully not too hard-to-remember passwords.
