{"id":204,"date":"2011-04-27T18:50:40","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T17:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2017-06-20T14:44:52","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T14:44:52","slug":"the-perils-of-passwords-a-k-a-sonys-security-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/27\/the-perils-of-passwords-a-k-a-sonys-security-sucks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perils of Passwords (a.k.a. Sony&#8217;s Security Sucks)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, we have all read about the latest global company to get hacked, and once again our online identities are open to use and abuse (well&#8230; even more than they were before anyway&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>The question that I have to ask myself is; How can I <em>really<\/em> protect myself online?<\/p>\n<p>Ask yourself this simple question: Do I use the same\/similar passwords for all my accounts?<\/p>\n<p>Now I happen <em>not to<\/em>, but I am in no way adept at protecting myself. In fact this very blog has been attacked in the past by Spam Bots, and when the Gawker sites got hacked, I quickly found my Facebook and Twitter accounts had been accessed<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>How can you prevent the cascading loss of your identities?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well I now use this set of simple rules:-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>NEVER<\/strong> use the same password across all my accounts. This is the golden rule!<\/li>\n<li>I (try to) use differing passwords for differing systems, for example;\n<ul>\n<li>Banking -&gt; I use a different password for ALL online banking accounts and credit cards.<\/li>\n<li>Online &#8216;forums&#8217; that don&#8217;t matter -&gt; I use one password for them all<\/li>\n<li>Chat Clients (MSN, Skype etc) -&gt; I use one password (but not the same as the &#8216;forums&#8217; one)<\/li>\n<li>eBay -&gt; Unique password<\/li>\n<li>PayPal -&gt; Unique Password (but similar to eBay so I don&#8217;t forget it)<\/li>\n<li>Desktop \/ Laptop -&gt; Unique passwords for each<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I use numbers instead of vowels and punctuation marks in order to make long\/complex passwords.\n<ul>\n<li>Consider the password &#8220;password1&#8221; &#8211; that could take Dictionary attack a few seconds to bypass, whereas &#8220;p4ssw0rd_h4rd&#8221; would probably only be cracked by Brute-force and could take days.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I Check my password strengths here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.passwordmeter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.passwordmeter.com\/<\/a>\u00a0or here\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.comparitech.com\/privacy-security-tools\/password-strength-test\/\">https:\/\/www.comparitech.com\/privacy-security-tools\/password-strength-test\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I use alternative email addresses (e.g. an unused Hotmail account) for Forum\/Tech sites that <strong>force<\/strong> you to register.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So now you see what I do, consider these common passwords and ask yourself how many of them (or variants) you use&#8230;..<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wifes name<\/li>\n<li>Kids name<\/li>\n<li>Date of Birth (forwards, backwards, wife&#8217;s, kid&#8217;s etc)<\/li>\n<li>Favourite pets name<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Password&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;12345&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Computer&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Fred&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Scared? :o)<\/p>\n<p>This might interested you too &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xkcd.com\">XKCD<\/a>&#8216;s detailed description of how insecure your password could be, even following these rules&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/password_strength.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, we have all read about the latest global company to get hacked, and once again our online identities are open to use and abuse (well&#8230; even more than they were before anyway&#8230;) The question that I have to ask myself is; How can I really protect myself online? Ask yourself this simple question: Do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}