Savemybutt.com

The other night Steve and Johnnie asked if I could spend a few minutes talking about hacked email accounts on the radio.

One of the topics I talked about was making sure your password is not a word or combination of words that can be found in the dictionary. This includes proper names.

Now, just a couple of days after we talked about it, it appears the Sony Entertainment Network, the PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment have been hacked yet again!

Only about 0.1%, or 93000 users, private information was jepordized.

Philip Reitinger, Sony’s chief information security officer, said in a blog post that they tested “a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database, [and while] the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts,” the hackers did have some success.

What does that mean? In a programmers world it means that a dictionary attack was used to comprimise Sony’s database.

Passwords like “mydogsue” or “fordmustang” or even “sarah100689″ are not safe passwords. A strong password includes special characters and symbols as well as capital letters and numbers. Another attribute that helps to make it harder to break your password is to make it longer.

Here is an example of a secure password:

V/lxU3N6N_;/nTV{b_W-fxWPxX!,thZ1m:Pc&EXSL<pQEZ>sYclDvL$xMJEOpKD

Now, you are not going to use a password like this. First, it’s to long for almost all sites. Then, it’s not memorable.

To borrow from Steve Gibson at FRC.com, a passord that has at least one of every character is far more secure. As an example, !Myd0gSue1 or $F0rdMu$tang65 or *Sarah1oo689!

Any combination of characters, numbers, and symbols makes your password exponentially harder to crack. Don’t forget, if you can make your password longer with this scheme it is even HARDER to break.

If you would like to read a little more about strong passwords you can visit Steve Gibsons site at GRC, https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

As a word of caution, the strongest passwords in the world are no good if you give them to the bad guy.

If you have malicious software on your computer that was designed to capture user names and passwords, then you’ve just given it all away.

If you respond to emails that ask you to verify your login information at some site, like your bank or PayPal, then you’ve just given it all away.

For your on security you should change your passwords on all the sites you visit to something stronger using all characters but memorable and make sure your computer is as healthy as possible.

The Savemybutt Bootcamp and Step-By-Step instructions and free software can help you keeping the computer clean, healthy, and fast.