New York, April 12 : Amid the looming threat from Heartbleed bug - that might have compromised millions of websites including Yahoo, Flickr and Tumblr by now - it is imperative to have a strong password that can stand hackers’ assaults, experts say.

To create a strong password, experts recommend using more than 10 characters at least.

“If eight characters is all you use, and if you restrict your characters to only alphabetic letters, it can be cracked in minutes,” Richard Boyd, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta was quoted as saying.

“I would say a password should be as long as you can reasonably remember, but 10 to 12 at least,” he added.

The Heartbleed bug affects the encryption technology used by a number of web and email servers, making it possible for intruders to access sensitive data even on secure sites.

Although there is not much that a regular Internet users can do to fix the problem, but experts are urging people to change the passwords for their various accounts and online services to beef up their security.

Do not choose a password based on your name or other information that could be easily discovered, said a LiveScience report.

Do not either choose a password that is a word, proper name or name of a TV show, etc.

A smart way could be to make up a sentence that can be easily remembered, and then taking the first letter of every word in the sentence you can create your password, the report added.(IANS)