The importance of strong passwords ("Anonymous" hack of Stratfor)

[Blackjack200]

According to the analysis, 50,277 unique credit card numbers were in the files posted by Anonymous, where 9,651 have not expired yet. The analysis also noted 86,594 email addresses, where 47,680 are unique; 27,537 phone numbers, where 25,680 are unique; 44,188 encrypted passwords, where 50 percent could have easily been cracked, and 13,973 U.S. addresses.

Password strength was noted as an important issue, where 73.7 percent of decrypted passwords were weak, 21.7 percent were of medium strength, and only 4.6 percent were strong. About 10 percent of decrypted passwords were less than five characters long, while only 4.8 percent were 10 or more characters long.

Edit: http://www.dailytech.com/Anonymous+...er+50000+Credit+Card+Numbers/article23613.htm

My friend who works in security told me to start using passphrases, so when I set up my mother's gmail account (she got an ipad for christmas) I set it with a 31 character passphrase. I'm also going to set-up dual authentication.

Won't protect her from MIM attacks or keyloggers, but I'm hoping she wouldn't face those kinds of attacks.

 

[Paperlantern]

You have already gone above and beyond what a lot of BUSINESSES do to protect thier e mail... or really any system.

 

[dawks]

Edit: http://www.dailytech.com/Anonymous+...er+50000+Credit+Card+Numbers/article23613.htm

My friend who works in security told me to start using passphrases, so when I set up my mother's gmail account (she got an ipad for christmas) I set it with a 31 character passphrase. I'm also going to set-up dual authentication.

Won't protect her from MIM attacks or keyloggers, but I'm hoping she wouldn't face those kinds of attacks.

Check out Password Haystacks. Length is more important than entropy. D0g..................... is actually a really good password.

I've been using Gmails multi-factor authentication for a year now. works great. Technically it does negate the value of keyloggers to a certain extent, such that it uses a one time, time sensitive token (~30sec). An attacker would need to capture your password, and security code, and submit it before it got to the server after you typed it.

 

[jadinolf]

Heck, my password is the same as so many:

**********

 

[sygyzy]

I'm using Last Pass + Google Authenticator. Love it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Heck, my password is the same as so many:

**********

That's kind of cool, the forum seems to auto sensor your forum password if you type it in. I guess it's a security feature.

Testing: *********

It totally works!