PASSWORD PERILS

Password Strength:
How Strong Is Your Password?

TECHNOLOGY | By Richard Darell

Internet security has always been a continuously evolving issue we’ve all had to deal with at one point or another. There are new and stronger security measures created on a daily basis, and yet they keep being overridden by crackers all over the world. This is usually not due to the security strength of the server or the code on it. It usually comes down to the user and what password he or she has chosen for the account. You might start to wonder how clever people think they are when they choose passwords like “123456” and “password” and think it’s a good decision. The thing is, your password strength is only as hard to crack as it is for you to remember. The harder it is to remember, the harder it will be to crack. It’s as simple as that.

There is a significant password strength increase when you go from 5 to 6 characters in your password. And when you hit 9 characters (upper case password), it will take a computer approximately 178 years to crack it. That should be enough time to spend on whatever you want to do on the Internet, wouldn’t you think? So, if you are one of those people who is sporting a somewhat weak (according to this infographic) password on your different online services, it’s a good time to change them all.

Password strength comes down to creativity. Family members, keyboard patterns and swipes are infinitely out of the question. These are the first words a cracker tries, and you would be surprised if you knew how many people set their password strength to an almost playful challenge for a cracker. An infographic from SecurityCoverage(design by Space Chimp Media) showcases data from a few of the largest password breaches in the history of the Internet. The interesting thing is that out of the 30 million accounts that were cracked on RockYou.com, an insane 290,731 people had the password “123456.” My head spun out of orbit over that.

Do yourself a huge favor and take a gander at your password farm and see if you can’t extend them to 9 characters (and to include upper case letters and symbols), and you could probably give crackers a headache for at least 178 years or so. Make sure your password strength is up to par with the level of personal information you have submitted to your online services. You will definitely save yourself a lot of time and sorrow by taking ten minutes to up your password strength and look through them all every once in a while. Once again remember, your password strength is only as good as it is hard to remember the password itself . . . .

From Bit Rebels

Peter’s Piece

There is lots of misinformation about passwords. Consider this:

You should have a separate password everything that you do on the internet including bank accounts, work emails, private emails, website, blog, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Pinit, Redit, Delicious, Amazon, Ebay, Paypal, stock exchange, Stumbleupon, all government sites requiring a login, and an endless list of other places you may have to remember a password for.

Forget password worries

Relax with a good book

 

Now available as an e-book from Smashwords.com

HAPPY READING

Then we are told that we must never write our passwords down anywhere and we should commit them to memory and change them every month. This could be a reason why otherwise intelligent people resort to 123456. These people have real logic. Next month they can change to 7891011. Personally, I prefer 101102103. No hacker would ever break that one.

Some advisers would have you walking down the street mumbling incomprehensible passwords under your breath as you try to commit them to memory before it’s time to change them all again.

But seriously, some of this advice should not be taken too seriously. If you have a strong password there should be no need to change it on a schedule. If your bank account password has been broken your money will be stolen within minutes rather than at the end of the month and you will certainly need to change your password immediately anytime you think it may have been compromised.

Care must always be taken on sites like Facebook that display personal information. The big don’ts here are don’t display your full name, full date of birth, phone number or street address. If your name is William John Smith you should consider being just Bill Smith. Friends looking for you will know from checking your profile if you are the right Smith.

Never display information on a public site that you have registered somewhere as a security question. Likewise, if your parents are prominent people, or their families have lived in the same district for several generations, don’t use your mother’s maiden name as a security question.