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The latest NIST (United States National Institute for Standards and Technology) guidelines on password policies recommend a minimum of 8 characters. Perhaps more interesting is what they recommend against. They recommend against allowing password hints, requiring the password to contain certain characters (like numeric digits or upper-case characters), using knowledge-based authentication (e.g., what is your mother's maiden name?), using SMS (Short Message Service) for two-factor authentication, or expiring passwords after some amount of time. They also provide recommendations on how password data should be stored.
[Ed. Note: Contrary to common practice, I would advocate reading the entire linked article so we can have an informed discussion on the many recommendations in the proposal. What has been your experience with password policies? Do the recommendations rectify problems you have seen? Is it reasonable to expect average users to follow the recommendations? What have they left out?]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:22PM
Quantity is more important than quality. Anything over 16 characters is going to be practically secure for longer than it takes for the password db/authentication mechanism to be exploited and the plaintext retrieved/captured.
The only time the added security of mixed case and non-alphanumeric characters adds a benefit is when you happen upon one of those dumb sites that is still using 8-12 character strong passwords, and honestly most of them probably have remote exploits calling their password entry/authentication mechanism's security into question anyways. And if you can steal it from there, it doesn't matter *HOW* secure your password is.
But maybe I am silly for thinking that way.
Unfortunately you are being a bit silly, or at least overly simplistic. Consider the following two systems.
1) A system which requires passwords exactly 16 characters long (huge quantity, as you described above). The system will only allow 0 and 1 as data input.
2) A system which requires passwords exactly 8 characters long. The system will allow all alphanumeric characters.
Assuming users were using the system correctly (so no passwords of "0000000000000000" or "password"), which is easier to crack?
The length, complexity, and everything else doesn't matter as much as password entropy. There is a lot of information theory behind this, but the simple example can be seen at XKCD [xkcd.com].