Most services require a password that is at least eight characters long. Another way is to take a lyric, line, or saying and shorten it into an acronym, such as turning “‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house” into “TtnbCaatth.” 3. For instance, users can turn a simple password like “happy777” into a stronger one like But you should avoid common words like Password as a basis. To come up with more creative passwords, Goodman advised users to “shake things up a bit.” One way to do so, he wrote, is to combine upper- and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Because these passwords are derived from past breaches, using them increases the likelihood of the so-called “unique” password being compromised once again, he said. “This type of attack is referred to as a ‘Dictionary Attack,’ or an attack where a password is searched systematically against all other passwords in a ‘dictionary’ or a specified list of existing passwords,” Smith said. “We may think we are clever, but with the billions of password users on the planet, the likelihood is someone has come up with the combination before,” said Tom Smith, vice president of Identity and Access at Gemalto, a digital security provider.ĭue to the rise in security breaches over the last few years -most notably Adobe and Facebook hacks in 2013 - millions of passwords are available in databases for criminals to leverage in cyberattacks, Smith said. While using the names of loved ones, pets, favorite sports teams and other personal details may help users remember their passwords, doing so also makes it easier for hackers to access their accounts. Be creative - use uncommon, nonsensical combinations Goodman recommends password managers such as PasswordBox, LastPass and RoboForm. To keep track of passwords, Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer at Identity Theft 911, wrote in a blog post that users should store passwords in a secure place. “For example, if malware records only Gmail account information, but the same password is used across a variety of sensitive sites, such as an online banking or retail site, cybercriminals can easily hack into all accounts and obtain personally identifiable information (PII) for nefarious purposes,” he said. “It’s a bad habit to get into.”Īlthough it’s easier to use the same password for several accounts, the convenience can result in exponentially more damage if compromised, Glenn said. “Never reuse the same password for multiple accounts,” said Dodi Glenn, senior director of security intelligence and research labs at ThreatTrack Security, a malware analysis and anti-virus software company. Here are five tricks to making safer, more secure passwords to better protect private accounts. He had also recommended you change your password every 90 days, but that led people to make tiny incremental changes like P#ssWrd2?, which is still guessable and leads to a false sense of security.Ĭreating stronger passwords, however, isn’t rocket science. He told the Wall Street Journal, “Much of what I did I now regret.” Partly that’s because his advice may have led to the current state of password apathy.įor instance, following his advice, you might create a password like P#ssWrd1? But that’s easier to guess than you think. Bill Burr, formerly of the National Institute of Standards and Technology now says that his 2003 guide to creating strong passwords could be all wrong. In fact, some of those who do follow “best practices” may still be at risk. When it comes to password strength, the report found that only 5 percent of stolen passwords were classified as “excellent.” While 44 percent of passwords were considered to be of medium strength, at 34 percent were considered weak passwords. Furthermore, thousands of people are still using similarly simple passwords, such as “password” and “admin.” Despite best practices and security advice frequently provided by account providers, the top two stolen passwords are “123456” and “123456789,” the report states. In 2016, 412.2 million Adult Friend Finder accounts were breached.Īlthough the Trustwave breach was likely due to malware installed on individual computers, the report also analyzed the stolen passwords and found that many users have become careless when creating passwords. Since then other breaches have dwarfed that, including the 1.5 billion Yahoo accounts and 145 million eBay user accounts in 2014. Payroll service provider ADP was also affected. In the breach, 1.58 million website login credentials and 320,000 email account credentials were stolen, including those of Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo. Trustwave, a Chicago-based information security firm, revealed in 2013 that a massive security breach compromised nearly 2 million websites and social media accounts in more than 100 countries. Are your passwords as strong as they can be? For many users, self-created passwords are not nearly as secure as they should be.
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