Post by Andy on Aug 7, 2014 11:38:42 GMT 10
In light of the recent event of a crime gang stealing over 1 billion passwords, I thought I would show you this to better protect yourself in regards to passwords for sensitive websites like your bank, ISP, email accounts, eBay accounts, etc. And it doesn't hurt to have a good strong password even for places like here.
I have used this site for many years www.grc.com/intro.htm The site has a great collection of free tools you can use to help protect yourself on the net. The common tools you'll want to use are all easy to understand & use. Before you go to the site, please read the rest of this post.
For the purposes of this post, when you go to GRC hover your mouse over the "Services" tab at the top. In the dropdown box, there are 2 items that we will concentrate on. The 1st is "Password Haystacks" & "Perfect Passwords".
Click on "Password Haystacks" & you will then able to work out some good strong passwords. Note, hackers or anyone wanting to steal passwords, will usually start by looking for words in a dictionary. Software is available on the net for doing this. If that fails, they will then run the test again with all the words reversed eg: little - elttil. Read all the info on the Password Haystacks page for a better understanding of what hackers do.
For this exercise I will use the word "equals" which will become apparent later. equals is in the dictionary & the pic below shows the time it would take to find. Look at the times I put the red box around.
Now the same word is spelt backwards. Notice the same time.
Now we want to make a hackers life more difficult. A password should be hard for a hacker to guess, but easy for you to remember. So I've still used the word "equals" but have made it into an equation using the house number of my address. Notice how much more time it adds.
And we can go one step further by adding a symbol, in this case a period (.) which adds even more time.
You will notice I have not used any uppercase letters, so if I change the e to an E, now look at the time.
This is NOT a password I use & is only to illustrate how this works. You can try lots of different combos, but it's best practice if you use lowercase & uppercase letters, numbers AND sybols in your passwords.
If you click on "Perfect Passwords" that I noted in the first pic, it will give you an idea how to start forming your strong passwords. Don't forget...Passwords should be hard for someone to guess, but easy for you to remember.
Here is the site to go to again...
www.grc.com/intro.htm
I have used this site for many years www.grc.com/intro.htm The site has a great collection of free tools you can use to help protect yourself on the net. The common tools you'll want to use are all easy to understand & use. Before you go to the site, please read the rest of this post.
For the purposes of this post, when you go to GRC hover your mouse over the "Services" tab at the top. In the dropdown box, there are 2 items that we will concentrate on. The 1st is "Password Haystacks" & "Perfect Passwords".
Click on "Password Haystacks" & you will then able to work out some good strong passwords. Note, hackers or anyone wanting to steal passwords, will usually start by looking for words in a dictionary. Software is available on the net for doing this. If that fails, they will then run the test again with all the words reversed eg: little - elttil. Read all the info on the Password Haystacks page for a better understanding of what hackers do.
For this exercise I will use the word "equals" which will become apparent later. equals is in the dictionary & the pic below shows the time it would take to find. Look at the times I put the red box around.
Now the same word is spelt backwards. Notice the same time.
Now we want to make a hackers life more difficult. A password should be hard for a hacker to guess, but easy for you to remember. So I've still used the word "equals" but have made it into an equation using the house number of my address. Notice how much more time it adds.
And we can go one step further by adding a symbol, in this case a period (.) which adds even more time.
You will notice I have not used any uppercase letters, so if I change the e to an E, now look at the time.
This is NOT a password I use & is only to illustrate how this works. You can try lots of different combos, but it's best practice if you use lowercase & uppercase letters, numbers AND sybols in your passwords.
If you click on "Perfect Passwords" that I noted in the first pic, it will give you an idea how to start forming your strong passwords. Don't forget...Passwords should be hard for someone to guess, but easy for you to remember.
Here is the site to go to again...
www.grc.com/intro.htm