Apple and the construction of secure passwords

With more and more personal information stored online and in the cloud, password security has gained far greater importance. Almost any account now will indicate how strong a password you're using.

Try out the interactive tool below. Put in a potential password and see an estimate of how long it would take a computer to crack it. Remember, adding capital letters, numbers and symbols can help strengthen a password.

Concern over password security comes as the Justice Department announced late Monday that it had unlocked the iPhone at the heart of a case that pitted privacy against a state investigation of terrorism. Apple's legal battle with the FBI resurfaced familiar debates around personal privacy and the security of our passwords in general.

There are a number of ways hackers (or possibly the government) could try to access data and accounts. The simplest is a "brute force" attack in which a computer tries out different combinations of characters, trying to find the right mix. Adding uppercase letters, numbers and special characters can greatly enhance a password and make it tougher to crack.

By including uppercase letters and numbers, the number of possible six-digit passwords goes from 300 million to more than 56 billion.

To strengthen passwords and system security, a lot of companies require employees to change passwords on a regular basis.

But research has shown that regularly scheduled password updates can actually make a user's system less secure. For one thing, we all have to remember a ton of passwords as it is (personal email, work email, Twitter, Yelp reviews, etc.). When required to change passwords regularly, people tend to use the basic password and just add or change a number, which is easily readable for hackers.

For some reason, a lot of people try and use passwords that are easy to remember (and for hackers to guess) like "123456" and "password," which were the two worst passwords in 2015, according to SplashData.

The case involving Apple now revolves around a "backdoor" to the iPhone's operating system that the government was requesting. The DOJ's announcement came weeks after a federal judge asked Apple to help the FBI unlock the phone used by Syed Farook, one of the shooters held responsible for 14 deaths in San Bernardino, California, in December.

The government hasn't revealed the third party that came forward to help the FBI circumvent iOS security.

In an open letter to customers posted online in February, Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined the company's response.

"Opposing this order is not something we take lightly," Cook wrote. "We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government."

The changes to the operating system the government had requested would allow it to unlock an iPhone using a brute force method. As it is, Apple's system will erase the iPhone's data if too many incorrect passwords are inputted in a row.

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