Windows passwords broken in seconds

"Swiss researchers released a paper on Tuesday outlining a way to speed the cracking of alphanumeric Windows passwords, reducing the time to break such codes to an average of 13.6 seconds from 1 minute 41 seconds. The method involves using large lookup tables to match encoded passwords to the original text entered by a user, thus speeding the calculations required to break the codes," reports CNet. "Users can protect themselves against the attack by adding non-alphanumeric characters to a password. Including other symbols besides alphanumeric characters adds complexity to the process of breaking passwords and that means the cracker needs more time or more memory or both."