Tag Archives: password

If Your Password Is On This List, It’s Time to Change It

It’s been several years since I have written about password hygeine. I have been hoping that a better security solution would be widely adopted and while I hear rumors in that regard, passwords still reign supreme.  So when I saw that the SafetyDetectives website had listed the 30 most common passwords, it seemed like a good time to revisit the topic.  Their study found that “123456” and “password”… More

What Do Pumpkin Spice Lattes and National Cybersecurity Awareness Month Have in Common?

What do pumpkin spice lattes and National Cybersecurity Awareness Month have in common?  Not much, other than both should be top of mind in October, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to think about them both in August.

Held every October, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure every American has the resources they need to stay safe and secure online while increasing the resilience of the Nation against cyber threats.  … More

Pokémon Go Catches More Than It Bargained For

Pikachu figure characterThe recently-released Pokémon Go has quickly emerged as a cultural phenomenon, with legions of players using their phones to “catch” Pokémon that emerge all around them, visible (thankfully) only to players.  While catching Pokémon by phone is far less cumbersome than collecting boxes upon boxes of Pokémon cards, as some of us did in the early aughts, it does come with its own set of pitfalls.  Specifically,… More

One More New Year’s Resolution: Change Your Passwords Before Groundhog Day

The SplashData list of worst passwords of 2014 was just published, and it looks very similar to the list in 2013, 2012, 2011, etc.:

Rank
Password
Change from 2013

1
123456
No Change

2
password
No Change

3
12345
Up 17

4
12345678
Down 1

5
qwerty
Down 1

6
123456789
No Change

7
1234
Up 9

8
baseball
New

9
dragon
New

10
football
New

11
1234567
Down 4

12
monkey
Up 5

13
letmein
Up 1

14
abc123
Down 9

15
111111
Down 8

16
mustang
New

17
access
New

18
shadow
Unchanged

19
master
New

20
michael
New

21
superman
New

22
696969
New

23
123123
Down 12

24
batman
New

25
trustno1
Down 1

Sadly,… More

Good Advice that Bears Repeating: Toughen Up Your Passwords!

In an article that repeats a common theme in this space, this week’s Economist talks about how researchers are trying to help ordinary people toughen up their passwords.  But despite the efforts of these researchers, the article’s conclusion is a gloomy one:

The upshot is that there is probably no right answer. All security is irritating (ask anyone who flies regularly), and there is a constant tension between people’s desire to be safe and their desire for things to be simple.… More

Consumer Response to Data Breach: Let’s Sue!

Interesting findings in the Unisys Security Index for the United States regarding what Americans say they would do in the event that they learned of a security breach suffered by an organization with which they were dealing:

  • Change passwords on that organization’s website and other sites (87%)
  • Stop dealing with that organization entirely (76%)
  • Publicly expose the issue (65%)
  • Take legal action (53%)
  • Continue dealing with the organization but not online (31%)

Thanks to Ted Julian of Co3 Systems for bringing this report to my attention.… More

Most Recent Sony Breach Illustrates the Cascading Effect of Data Breaches

It was revealed recently that Sony’s on-line services were the subject of another significant attack. This incident, however, did not exploit a vulnerability in Sony’s security infrastructure so much as it highlighted the cascading effect of data breaches.

Rather than try to scale any fences or jimmy any windows, this attack used account holders’ own keys to open the front door. According to a statement by Sony,… More