Capital Berg

Keeps People Up-To-Date

Friday, January 15, 2021
Log in

2014’s List Of Worst Passwords: Just As Horrible As You’d Think

By

Worst-passwords

 

If the onset of prominent hackings taught us anything in 2014, its literally nothing.

Password management firm Splashdata revealed its yearly list of the most terrible passwords and it’s just as horrible as you’d think. The organization, which investigated the 3 million passwords released online last year, uncovered that the most common leaked password in 2014 was “123456,” followed by “password” — both topped the list last year, as well.

Obviously, the more common a password is the higher the chances a hacker can get into individual records, such as email and banking.

While number series were as popular as ever, games terms like “baseball” and “football” were used more often, and additionally words related to most loved games teams — “yankees,” “hawks,” “steelers,” “rangers” and “lakers” all made the top 100.

Birthday years were common as well (particularly 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992) and names like “Michael,” “Jennifer,” “Michelle” and “Hunter” are also among the top 100 worst passwords of 2014.

The list is especially alarming as it comes on the heels of significant hacking attacks against firms like Sony Pictures and the celebrity naked photograph scandal that hit last year.

Just have a look at the full list of passwords;

  1. 123456
    2. password
    3. 12345
    4. 12345678
    5. qwerty
    6. 123456789
    7. 1234
    8. baseball
    9. dragon
    10. football
    11. 1234567
    12. monkey
    13. letmein
    14. abc123
    15. 111111
    16. mustang
    17. access
    18. shadow
    19. master
    20. michael
    21. superman
    22. 696969
    23. 123123
    24. batman
    25. trustno1

There are simple approaches to handle the issue of passwords. And the responsibility is not so much on you — the entire password system is imperfect and muddled. However, there are simple steps you can take to be more secure. One is utilizing password management software to guarantee that your passwords are strong enough; upgraded, and safely locked down and in a place you can find them.

For people who can’t be worried to make that stride, you can still do more. Regardless of the fact that your password isn’t completely random and disconnected from your personality (which is best), you can still pick your same evident passwords and spruce them up a bit.

You can use the position of keys on a keyboard to do this — for instance, people who use “123456” or “qwerty” can just scramble those together based on the keys, making something like ‘q1w2e3r4t5′. Need to make it simpler? Take something you’ll recall: “My uncle lives in Kansas” and make it your password “Myunclelivesinkansas” and include his street address: “Myunclelivesinkansas207.” These long, complex passwords are really very hard to hack and are easy to recall. While these won’t prevent great hackers from getting into your stuff, at least you’ll be making moves to escape from the top 10.

Sony Cyberattack the biggest hack in modern times

By

sony-cyber-attack

America accused North Korea over the Sony Picture’s hack after FBI said that they believed North Korea was involved particularly because of the action comedy film in which the fictional assassination of Kim Jong-Un occurs. But one can’t deny that Sony Pictures witnessed one of the most deadly cyber attacks in modern times.

The hackers Guardians of Peace GOP gave a severe blow to Sony Pictures Entertainment by releasing a lot of private date and information about employees and celebrities associated with the company. Moreover, social security numbers and spreadsheet enlisting top executives along with their salaries were also released by the hackers. They not only destroyed property and leaked confidential information but also have created wave of terror in the market. The GOP sent threatening emails to employees mentioning the threat that hovers over them and their families. One of the emails stated that the group are very much aware of the internal workings of the organization involved and it became obvious that they might even have an inside man right in the center. Almost 75 % of the data from the organization’s servers was wiped out after stealing and still it did not stop there. 5 movies were stolen including the yet to be released Annie.

Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures along with co chairman Amy Pascal have tried a lot to just get over the crisis but it’s been a storm that hasn’t faded or diminished in its power and is still affecting the organization.

The Interview, the flick that caused all this mayhem still founded way to be released online and on some theaters on its schedule on Christmas Day. And the profits its showing can help the organization and its employees to reestablish their faith as a global force in the entertainment industry.

North Korea goes offline amid internet outage

By

north-korea-goes-offline

North Korea has almost virtually gone offline after being at the center of the blame when Sony Pictures got hacked. Dyn Research, a U.S. based internet monitoring company reported.

The company stated that the reasons for disruptions in internet services were unknown but could be owed to some technological glitches or even a big cyber attack. Officials involved in the investigations pertaining to Sony Picture’s hack have said that the U.S. government wasn’t involved in any cyber action against North Korea.

President Barack Obama earlier vowed to take up serious actions against the Sony hackers and held North Korea responsible. He vowed to respond against these attacks.

Almost all of North Korea’s web traffic runs through servers in China, therefore Washington also requested Beijing to shut down all routers employed by North Korea that go through Chinese networks. Furthermore, they also requested China to find North Korean hackers in China and send them back in order to give a strong message to Pyongyang.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also issued a statement saying that they condemn these attacks but also exclaimed that there was no proof that North Korea was behind the Sony hacks.

The hackers, Guardians of Peace said they were infuriated at the sight of a Sony comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which the studio has now officially pulled from a general release.

For the last 24 hours though, the internet services are getting degraded in North Korea or either there’s a serious software glitch. The results depict that almost all of North Korea appears to be offline except for a very few. It also seems highly likely that somebody could be directing some sort of a cyber attack against them while they’re having trouble staying online.

SONY Attackers Leaked Trove Of Records Including Employee Passwords

By

Sony-pictures-leaks-passwords

Everybody is terrible at passwords; that is nothing new. Yet if you’re working at a prominent studio like Sony, maybe you ought to pick a finer secret word than “s0ny123” or “password.”

Days after the enormous hack against Sony, a group of hackers calling themselves “GOP”(Guardian of Peace) discarded online a trove of records that seem to be from the internal computers of Sony Pictures Entertainment. The documents contain all types of data, for example, sales reports, syndication contracts, and employee salaries.

Along with the hacked trove is also a folder called, just, “passwords.” And much the same as you’d expect, inside the folder there’s a document called “passwords.doc” dated March 2, 2011, which contains what resembles a rundown of worker usernames, passwords, and even credit card numbers.

One more folder in the trove contained payroll spreadsheets, with details, for example, workers’ names, occupation titles, home addresses, and current pay rates. A portion of the spreadsheet records is ensured by a password — a decent security practice. Sadly, within the same folder, there’s also a file named “passwords” which contains the password to open the documents.

It’s still misty how the hacker got access to Sony’s computer systems, and how they found themselves able to siphon out a huge number of documents. However, judging from the utilization of frightful passwords and the act of placing passwords in folders right beside the files they are suppose to protect, Sony’s security practices may be worthy of some responsibility.

Certainly, this isn’t the first time Sony has been trapped using awful security and password rehearses. Way back in 2011, Sony was broken numerous times, hitting the organization’s Playstation Network and Sony Pictures, uncovering 37,000 client accounts. The hack uncovered that Sony was putting away those clients’ passwords in plaintext instead of encrypting them, which is currently the diligence standard.

Categories