May 2025 • Markus

Password Cracking in 2025: Why 8 Characters Just Don’t Cut It Anymore

In just one year, password cracking speeds have jumped dramatically — and the numbers are alarming. According to the latest 2025 password table released by Hive Systems for World Password Day, consumer-grade GPUs have gotten nearly 20% faster at brute-forcing passwords compared to 2024.

To put it in perspective: an 8-character password using only lowercase letters can now be cracked in just 3 weeks — a process that would have taken over a month last year.

🚀 GPU Power and AI: The Password Security Threat

Hive Systems attributes this acceleration to a surge in available computing power — especially thanks to AI hardware. Systems built for training large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude require massive parallel processing capabilities. That same hardware can be turned against password hashes.

In fact, password cracking speeds on AI-optimized systems are estimated to be 1.8 billion percent faster than on regular consumer devices. Let that sink in.

“We’re seeing an astronomical ramp-up in computing power. Passwords that were considered strong a year ago can now be broken in a fraction of the time.” — Alex Nette, CEO of Hive Systems

🔍 What the 2025 Password Chart Shows

Hive’s cracking simulations use 12 Nvidia RTX 5090—the most powerful consumer cards on the market today. Here’s how password strength stacks up:

🔐 Hashing Still Matters

When attackers breach a database, they usually don’t get plaintext passwords — they get hashed versions. For example, the hash: 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 is the MD5 hash of the word “password”.

Hackers generate massive dictionaries of precomputed hashes and compare them against the stolen ones. Hive Systems uses the bcrypt algorithm with cost factor 10 (32,768 iterations) in their analysis — a standard in many systems today.

✅ Recommendations: Secure Your Passwords

• Use passwords with at least 13 characters
• Include uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters
• Rely on a trusted password manager
• Enable 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication)

The takeaway? As computing power grows, the time window for password cracking shrinks. Security hygiene must keep pace with technology.