You may have the best security software and hardware in place in your home and office, but if someone can easily guess your passwords, you’ve left the worst possible hole open for hackers.
Strong passwords should be the norm. Too many people don’t take password selection seriously and leave themselves open to the easiest method hackers use to compromise your data. You may laugh when you read that many people use the word password as their account password. If you’re one of those people who use “password”, I’m sorry, but read on. Another commonly used number series is: 123456. Many sites that don’t require strong passwords will require at least six characters, so that’s why some lazily choose all six number sequences.
Hackers break into systems and easily guess some passwords and run password cracking software for others. A password cracking program will run through a dictionary, common passphrases, and date of birth combinations. Once a password is cracked, you are vulnerable to loss of privacy, identity, and financial theft. The hacker could use your computer to victimize other computers.
Here are some tips for better password usage.
1. The longer the password, the better. You may be worried about remembering a longer password, but there is a trick you can use. Try to create a phrase that you will easily remember and use the first letter of the phrase. If you add some numbers or characters, you will have really increased the strength. Here is an example of that technique. Say you love your mom’s cooking and who doesn’t? “I love my mom’s cooking no matter what she does!” Ilmmcnmwsm! If you type the letter I in uppercase, followed by lowercase letters and throw an exclamation mark at the end, you have created a password that is quite difficult to crack.
2. Do not use text found in the dictionary. A password cracking program can execute millions of words in seconds. I’ve seen them work, as part of my computer forensics training. Some password cracking programs are freely available on the Internet and others are for sale that can crack specific programs.
3. I know you may not want to, but change your passwords periodically. Some recommend that you do it every two or three months. Set a reminder in your calendar program.
4. If a hacker is sent to a password reset link, they will guess the answers to your security phrases. If you choose the simple ones, you just made the hackers task a little bit easier. It was reported that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email was hacked because the hacker had done some research on her. The report said that he knew her zip code, her date of birth and where she met her husband.
There are some software tools and hardware devices that can help you protect your passwords. I will write about some of them in a future article. For now, use the best passwords you can and make them strong.
