Robert Siciliano
Online Security and Safety Evangelist to McAfee Robert is an identity theft expert who is committed to ...
Protect your information by creating a secure password that makes sense to you, but not to others.
Most people don’t realize there are a number of common techniques used to crack passwords and plenty more ways we make our accounts vulnerable due to simple and widely used passwords.
How to get hacked
Dictionary attacks: Avoid consecutive keyboard combinations— such as qwerty or asdfg. Don’t use dictionary words, slang terms, common misspellings, or words spelled backward. These cracks rely on software that automatically plugs common words into password fields. Password cracking becomes almost effortless with a tool like John the Ripper or similar programs.
Cracking security questions: Many people use first names as passwords, usually the names of spouses, kids, other relatives, or pets, all of which can be deduced with a little research. When you click the “forgot password” link within a webmail service or other site, you’re asked to answer a question or series of questions. The answers can often be found on your social media profile. This is how Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account was hacked.
Simple passwords: Don’t use personal information such as your name, age, birth date, child’s name, pet’s name, or favorite color/song, etc. When 32 million passwords were exposed in a breach last year, almost 1% of victims were using “123456.” The next most popular password was “12345.” Other common choices are “111111,” “princess,” “qwerty,” and “abc123.”
Reuse of passwords across multiple sites: Reusing passwords for email, banking, and social media accounts can lead to identity theft. Two recent breaches revealed a password reuse rate of 31% among victims.
Social engineering: Social engineering is an elaborate type of lying. An alternative to traditional hacking, it is the act of manipulating others into performing certain actions or divulging confidential information.
How to make them secure
10. Strong passwords are easy to remember but hard to guess. Iam:)2b29! — This has 10 characters and says “I am happy to be 29!” I wish.
11. Use the keyboard as a palette to create shapes. %tgbHU8*- Follow that on the keyboard. It’s a V. The letter V starting with any of the top keys. To change these periodically, you can slide them across the keyboard. Use W if you are feeling all crazy.
12. Have fun with known short codes or sentences or phrases. 2B-or-Not_2b? —This one says “To be or not to be?”
13. It’s okay to write down your passwords, just keep them away from your computer and mixed in with other numbers and letters so it’s not apparent that it’s a password.
14. You can also write a “tip sheet” which will give you a clue to remember your password, but doesn’t actually contain your password on it. For example, in the example above, your “tip sheet” might read “To be, or not to be?”
15. Check your password strength. If the site you are signing up for offers a password strength analyzer, pay attention to it and heed its advice.
Robert Siciliano is a McAfee Consultant and Identity Theft Expert. See him discussing how to protect yourself from identity theft on CounterIdentityTheft.com. (Disclosures)
Tags: access to live fraud resolution agents, counter identity theft, credit card fraud and protection, credit monitoring and resolution, identity fraud scams, identity protection surveillance, Identity thieves and cybercriminals, McAfee Identity Protection, password complexity check, personal identity theft fraud, social media passwords, stolen passwords
Submit your own comments / message for this post