Password hacking

Found this on the internet the other day; a very fascinating read. It explains how passwords are hacked over the net on a massive scale, and just how useless and weak your password choice can be. As someone who is not much interested in computers and coding i found the article really interesting; it's well-written and something every internet user should know these days.

Enjoy.


http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/

 

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Short and easy to remember!

 

i use "zengizmo" as my password at all online sites

 

That's a wise way to alert worldwide terrorist groups of your online presence. :2thumbsup:

 

I remember when i was a little kid, all of my passwords consisted of the word 'applesauce' good times..

 

i have developed a system for passes whereby even i don't know my passwords. doesn't mean they're unhackable, but certainly tougher to crack than most.

 

goooood times. haha. i used to have a fetish for the band Nirvana back when i was 13 or so. Most of my passwords contained a Nirvana or Kurt reference then. lolz. Now i use pretty complex passwords and forget them often. Apart from HF and a couple other sites. Cause HIPFORUMS is the shizznit baybee!

 

I usually use the same password for everything... except for those sites that are like "your password must contain at lease one upper case, one lower case, and number in it" then i have to do a little modification to my typical password and am always like "Fuck! i'm never going to remember this now!" that one capitalized letter and added number just messes everything up lol

 

numbers don't really make it that much tougher to crack anyway, even when used in longer sequences. it's much wiser to use a random combination of letters instead of numbers, or at least the two combined. using just one single number is for all intents and purposes pointless.

 

I'm thinking I need to get smarter about my online passwords, after reading that article.

I like one website I use where they ask me a random personal question of my choosing first. If I don't answer the question right, it never even gets to the password screen.

 

I have a password that if I google it, I get back a scary warning message from google they think I might be a hacker. lol

 

I'm an expert at setting cunning passwords. I'm also an expert at forgetting them. doh!

 

yeah, that answer, which probably is not a random sequence of letters + numbers is just as hackable as your password is. even more so if it's a word contained in a dictionary.

from what i understand such massive scale hacking isn't done on purposes to actually access your account, it is done for purely informational goals, to learn about password trends, which, ultimately might be used to hack actual individual accounts where and when necessary. so, the security question aside, your password hash on that site is still just as hackable with or without it.

 

I dunno nuthin about this stuff. However it seems like it probably depends partly on how the info is stored. At the very least it complicates the matter cuz it adds a layer that needs to be hacked. And that first layer could be any one of three random choices, which adds to the complexity. They also throw up another page before it gets to the password. It brings up another feature identifying me, and I have to agree that it's the right one before they let me enter my password.

Obviously it's all hackable. The question would be, how easily, and is it worth the trouble? In my case it definitely is not. I would wager that it's not worth it in most other cases too. But I suppose if somebody could figure out the way through that labyrinth, and found somebody whose account was worth the trouble to hack, it could pay off at some point.

 

Only thing to worry about as far as I can see is with a cracked password is maybe a spam-bot could get into your computer and operate in the background unbeknownst to the user, spewing out spam the whole time you're online using your IP and even e-mail ...

BTW, turn off 'remote assistance' on your computer for fuck sake!

 

I already get more than enough remote assistance from my telepathic companion. She hacked my brain, and now my firewall is no longer worth a damn.

 

The best thing to prevent this threat is changing regular password at certain times.

 

I always use a password generator, and have my passwords stored in a 512 bit encrypted vault on the hard drive. These passwords are always 32 characters long and consist of a-z, A-z, special characters too (where allowed).

They might be able to brute force my shit, but with todays standards, it would take the most powerful computer 68 million years...

Of course... it depends, the computer might get lucky??? :O

 

Just use the name of your favorite pet. lol

 

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