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choosing a strong password

The Internet helps every business connect to potential customers all around the world. No wonder everyone is getting their businesses online. And this is just the beginning, as our personal lives will become even more dependent on the Internet.

However, this wonderful trend comes with some risks. As more and more of our businesses and details get online, they become even more vulnerable to hackers who may gain access to insecure facilities and retrieve very private data.

Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your computer. The stronger your password, the more protected your computer will be from hackers and malicious software. You should make sure you have strong passwords for all accounts on your computer.

The use of strong passwords can slow or often defeat the various attack methods of compromising a terminal’s security. Although Some applications will allow users to select their own password. To make it easier to remember their passwords, users often use the same or similar passwords on each accounts and most users will select a very simple and easy-to-remember password such as their birthday, the name of their town/village, their mother's maiden name, or the name of a relative.

Short and simple passwords are relatively easy for attackers to determine. Some common techniques that attackers use to crack password include:

  •  Guessing Password: The attacker attempts to log on using the user's account by repeatedly guessing likely words and phrases such as their children's names, their city of birth, and local sports teams.
  •  Phishing : the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online.
  •  Social Engineering: Social engineering is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking people into breaking normal security procedures. It could be a telephone conversation where the guy on the other side claims his from IT department and simply ask for the network access password or other private information.
  •  Online Dictionary Technique: The attacker uses an automated program that includes a text file of words. The program repeatedly attempts to log on to the target system using a different word from the text file on each try.
  •  Offline Dictionary Technique: Similar to the online dictionary attack, the attacker gets a copy of the file where the hashed or encrypted copy of user accounts and passwords are stored and uses an automated program to determine what the password is for each account. This type of attack can be completed very quickly once the attacker has managed to get a copy of the password file.
  •  Offline Brute Force Technique: This is a variation of the dictionary attacks, but it is designed to determine passwords that may not be included in the text file used in those attacks. Although a brute force attack can be attempted online, due to network bandwidth and latency they are usually undertaken offline using a copy of the target system's password file. In a brute force attack, the attacker uses an automated program that generates hashes or encrypted values for all possible passwords and compares them to the values in the password file.

 

Each of these techniques can be slowed down significantly through the use of strong passwords. Therefore, computer users should use strong passwords for all of their computer accounts.

A strong password:

  • 01Is at least eight characters long.
  • 02Does not contain your user name, real name, or company name.
  • 03Does not contain a complete word.
  • 04Is significantly different from previous passwords.
  • 05 Contains characters from each of the following four categories:
 Description Examples
 Lower Letters  a, b, c, d, e, f, ......
 Upper Letters  A, B, C, D, E, F, .....
 Numerals  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0
 Symbols  ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + -={ } | [ ] \ : " ; ' < > ? , . /

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