Password Security

Getting hands on personal information leading to breach of identity and security issues is the hottest methodology of criminals. Thanks to the Internet, as I had earlier mentioned there is tons of information just available to just about anybody about just about anybody (that is right) and so ease of availability leads hackers and others to get their hand on it.  This can be done by being anywhere in the world and access other people’s information again anywhere in the world. It surely is a world without borders since the web servers can be hosted anywhere in the world. This is exactly what happened at Monster.com were details of 1.3 million job seekers were stolen.

Hackers broke into the U.S. on-line recruitment site’s password-protected resume library using credentials that Monster Worldwide said were stolen from its clients, in one of the biggest Internet security breaches in recent memory. Talking about password protection, a 23 year old convicted computer hacker states that it hacking into corporate computers is the easiest thing to do- “so easy that a caveman could do it.” Read this. The main reason stated by him is that the computers were insecure with default passwords and once he had the default password then “we’d have all sorts of information, basically the whole database, right at our fingertips.”

Keith Rhodes, chief technologist at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said “Default passwords are a silly problem,” said Rhodes, who is widely considered to be the federal government’s top hacker. “But they were able to take a silly flaw and turn it into a business. … It disappoints me, but I’m not surprised.”

Password security is real important even with our personal computers and one has to take the time to set up a unique password that is not generic and change it often especially if on-line accounts are used and financial transactions are being conducted.