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The IT world was rocked in December 2010 when a
group of hackers, known as ‘Gnosis’, gained access
to almost 200,000 users’ passwords for the blogging
site Gawker.
What soon became apparent was
the amount of weak passwords being used by the
bloggers, which made them easy prey for this kind of
attack. What's more, once their passwords to this
site had been discovered, the hackers were then able
to access other online accounts since a vast number
of users were using the same login details for
multiple websites.
Following the attack, an
analysis by the Wall Street Journal listed the top
passwords as being ‘123456’, ‘password’ and
‘12345678’. Not exactly the enigma code, is it?
The importance of complex
passwords |
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Users today are strongly advised against
using simple numeric-type passwords or words
that can be found in the dictionary, since
hackers are able to use ‘dictionary
attacks’, robots that can try 130,000
references from the dictionary in a mere 26
seconds.
So how complex should a
password be in order to be secure? And how
can you be expected to remember a seemingly
random assortment of upper case and lower
case characters, numbers and punctuation
marks? |
Analysis by the Wall Street Journal listed
the top passwords as '123456', 'password'
and '12345678'.
So how complex should
a password be in order to be secure? |
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Choosing a secure password
To
ensure a secure password, try following the
guidelines below. The more complex the
better and always use a different password
for each website you user.
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Make your
password at least 8 characters in
length
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Never use
words that can be found in the
dictionary, or names of people or
even products
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Don’t use
combinations of that could be easy
to guess such as ‘123456’, or
personal information such as your
date of birth
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Choose a
password consisting of an apparently
random combination of numbers,
letters and characters
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Never write
down your password or tell anyone it
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Have a
different password for each system
or website you use
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A tip for remembering your secure password
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Choose a
sentence that you find easy to
remember and take the first letter
of each word, retaining case
sensitivity as well as any numbers
and characters. For instance, the
sentence: “When I was 21 I spent
£950 going to Japan!”
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This then
becomes “WIw21Is£950gtJ!”
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This is now
your master password which can be
subtly changed for each account
login. For example, your Facebook
password could be
“WIw21Is£950gtJ!_fb”
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Visit our website |
Back to main e-zine |
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Delta Comtech Ltd
Artillery House, Heapy Street
Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK11 7JB |
Tel:
0870 2200567
info@delta-comtech.co.uk |
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