passwords
Gadgets
Remainders – Things We Didn’t Post
2:00PM Wilson Rothman | If Robots Killed People, Soldiers Wouldn’t Have To…Sweden Disappears from the Internet For a Day…Over 95% of People Screw Up Username and Password…Founder of Jedi Religion “Intimidated” By Shopkeepers More »
Online
The Most Popular Password Is 123456 (Just Like Spaceballs)
7:20AM Mark Wilson | I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. With the list of 10,000 email passwords that’s been making the rounds following Hotmail/Gmail/etc phishing, Bogdan Calin of Acunetix analysed the data for real-world trends. The results are shamefully funny. More »
Online
Georgia Sex Offenders Have to Give Internet Passwords to Authorities
10:15AM Matt Buchanan | A Georgia law going into effect tomorrow will require that all sex offenders not simply turn over their email addresses and screen names to authorities—which goes back to 2006—but all their passwords as well. More »
Computers
Study: 88% of IT Pros Would Steal Passwords or Data if Fired
11:00PM John Mahoney | If you needed another reason to keep your sysadmins happy: Out of 300 IT pros polled by security company Cyber Ark, 88% said they would steal sensitive data or futz with master login passwords if they happened to be fired. Granted, this is a study publicised by a company that offers services to protect networks against internal rogue operators, but the more data like this that comes out, the nicer our brave IT managers are likely to be treated. Or, the more ridiculous security barriers will be put in place to keep the good ones from easily doing their jobs–one or the other. So perhaps we should have our own informal comment survey–IT dudes: Would you go 21st century postal on your employers if you were let go? [Ars Technica, Image: shearforce] More »
Online
San Francsico City Worker Hordes IT Passwords; Only Shares With Mayor Newsome
1:30PM Matt Hickey | After having seen The Dark Knight three times over the last weekend I can’t help but think this would be a great scene for the next film (which had better not be called Caped Crusader): A city municipal worker in the IT department changes some very important passwords and refused to give them up, even after jailed. From his cell, he divulges the codes to just one man, the city mayor, in a secret meeting that even the DA and police don’t know about. This actually happened this week in San Francisco. The IT tech, Terry Childs, wasn’t up to any nefarious deeds, or so he says, he just didn’t want his co-workers to mess up his huge system, and can anyone who’s ever worked in IT blame him? [SFGate] More »
Computers
What Would Chicks Do for a Klondike Bar? Give Up Their Password
4:20AM Matt Buchanan | I thought that the whole chicks would do anything for chocolate stereotype was just, you know, a stereotype, but vaguely scientific market research proves it’s true! Infosecurity Europe went around posing as marketers, offering people chocolate bars in exchange for their computer passwords, and 45 percent of the women gave it up like prom night. Only 10 percent of the dudes went for it. Of course, it’s totally possible the women were actually more conniving in their desire for the chocolate, and they all just lied about their password, while only 10 percent of the guys were able to devise such a clever ruse. I mean, that’s what I would’ve done. [McSolutions via The Raw Feed] More »
Gadgets
DIY Alphanumeric Password Generator. Verdict: Pretty 4UC387G Useful
12:04AM Gizmodo US Edition | How secure are your passwords? Probably not very. The guys over at Popsci have a neat partial solution to that problem: a DIY alphanumeric random password generator. Made with an Olimex AVR development board and some custom software, the gizmo produces 16-character passcodes on its LCD at the press of a button. No dictionary words, no girlfriends’ names. Just nice, secure random letters and special characters. All it takes is $43 worth of stuff, and some soldering. The only problem: in the published version, passcode saving isn’t enabled, so you’ll have to write those secure beasties down somewhere. If you make one, give it a post-1988 case won’t you? [PopSci] More »
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