Items Tagged with "Passwords"
Your Weekend Security Challenge: Password-Style
April 12, 2013 Added by:Le Grecs
Password managers will automatically fill in usernames and passwords as your target surfs around the web doing their usual things. I’ve found they just love this convenience and it serves as a great motivator for them to continue using it.
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What Makes My Passwords Vulnerable?
November 25, 2012 Added by:Robert Siciliano
Simple passwords: When 32 million passwords were exposed in a breach last year, almost 1% of victims were using 123456. The next most popular password was 12345. Other common choices are 111111, princess, qwerty, and abc123. Avoid these types of passwords, which are easily guessed...
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E-mailing Passwords - Practice What You Preach
November 19, 2012 Added by:Bill Mathews
That’s right, I got an email with my username and password listed right there. That probably doesn’t anger normal people (let alone drive them to write an article about it), but I have never been accused of being normal so I’m pretty annoyed. Here, in no particular order, are my reasons for the anger and frustration...
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Never Attribute to Malice, But Always Verify
November 15, 2012 Added by:Fergal Glynn
FX did find hardcoded local bootloader passwords. These would require physical access and are the types of hardcoded passwords commonly found in networking gear and appliances. Yes a vulnerability but not likely nefarious...
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On Password Hell
November 06, 2012 Added by:Joel Harding
I had one sysadmin a few years ago who demanded we all use 64 character passwords and every other character had to switch type. It was something like ^y?M3aI`B[a/ and so on... It took two minutes to type it in and I had to carry a paper with the password written on it. I was so glad when he left...
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Does it Make Sense to Keep Changing Your Passwords?
October 31, 2012 Added by:Rafal Los
I'm running a small experiment on myself in which I've set up an account on a public, high-traffic web-based system out there that has a ton of my personal information. I've not changed my password in almost 6 months, but I still feel relatively good and certain that I am the only one who has access to my stuff...
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Network Design, Wireless Security, and Password Policies - Business Beware
October 15, 2012 Added by:Gary McCully
A while back I was on a wireless assessment in which I was able to compromise the client’s primary Windows Domain from their guest wireless network. My hope in writing this article is that organizations will take their network design, wireless security, and password policies a little more seriously...
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When Log Files Attack: IEEE Data Leak
September 28, 2012 Added by:Tripwire Inc
The fact that usernames and passwords were being logged to a plaintext file itself is problematic, even if the passwords are being hashed when stored in a database, if such data is logged in plain text it defeats the entire purpose...
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How to PWN Systems Through Group Policy Preferences
September 20, 2012 Added by:Jeff McCutchan
All users have read access to the SYSVOL share of the domain controller. Forget about password cracking or passing the hash, you just get the cleartext password. A simple search for “*.xml” in the SYSVOL share on the domain controller will show if your organization is vulnerable...
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Microsoft Forcing Users to Use Less Secure Passwords
September 18, 2012 Added by:Dan Dieterle
Looks like Windows 8 is capped at a 16 character limit for compatibility with existing Microsoft Accounts. With the decrease of the character set, by limiting special characters for compatibility with Microsoft’s other services, the passwords are less secure than before...
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Raising Zombies in Windows: Passwords
September 13, 2012 Added by:Rob Fuller
List the tokens available with Incognito, your new user will be there, steal it and you're done. You now have the ability to user that account/domain token on any of the hosts you've compromised on the network, not just the ones they happen to have left themselves logged in...
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Google Wallet: Please Tell Me They’re Joking...
September 08, 2012 Added by:Joel Harding
No computer in the world is safe from a determined hacker. Most of us don’t properly secure our computer, our smart phone, or even our wallets. So how in the heck does storing your credit and debit card information “in the cloud” help you secure your already vulnerable information?
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The Great UDID Hacker Cache: What's the Big Deal?
September 07, 2012 Added by:Rafal Los
Why am I calling this a psychological operation? From talking to people who would know - the UDID is just a tracking mechanism to link a device to a person. The fact that this has stirred such a sentiment against the federal government at a time when distrust of is already high is suspect...
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Hackers Grabbed Twelve Million Apple IDs from FBI
September 05, 2012 Added by:Dan Dieterle
Is the information legit? If so, why would an FBI agent have a list of twelve million Apple ID’s which in some cases can be used to access information just as a password would? And how did the hacker group exploit this particular agent’s laptop and recover information from it?
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The OTHER Problem with Passwords
August 29, 2012 Added by:Wendy Nather
Organizations are motivated to prioritize ease of use over security if they feel their target audience won't be able to use advanced features without support. The result is that the password reset process to an address of record is the easiest way to get into an account. And of course attackers know this too...
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The Day I Was Erased Digitally
August 17, 2012 Added by:Theresa Payton
It’s everyone’s worst night nightmare - everything digital in your life gets wiped out. Your phone, your computer, your tablet, every email address, social network profile. It really does happen, and most of you probably didn’t know that even techies and security experts worry about this happening to them...