Computer Hack Attacks

[+EdwardGlen]

Morning All

 

You may want to change all your password protected whatevers. Hack attacks are way way up since the Wikileaks scandal broke.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx At MS there is a really good page on creating super strength PW's.

 

I have changed all of mine to 12 word sentences with punctuations, numbers, and upper case letters and now my PW's are at least 20 characters in length. Pain in the donkey to do but necessary.

 

Especially if you're a CG or collective or Co-Op.

 

Peace

[solabeirtan]

Morning All

 

You may want to change all your password protected whatevers. Hack attacks are way way up since the Wikileaks scandal broke.

 

http://www.microsoft...rds/create.aspx At MS there is a really good page on creating super strength PW's.

 

I have changed all of mine to 12 word sentences with punctuations, numbers, and upper case letters and now my PW's are at least 20 characters in length. Pain in the donkey to do but necessary.

 

Especially if you're a CG or collective or Co-Op.

 

Peace

 

Did you memorize them all ? Dispose of all the evidence ?

 

... whatever, surely helpfull advice, just dont lose them.

[1337Gr33n]

There are also random password generators out there on the net, that can be used to generate almost indecipherable passwords.

[David1946]

The point being made is a valid one whether you own a bank or just your personal PC. Yes, the recent attacks have been at those involved in one way or another with wikileaks but It would be disastrous if some hacker cracked a caregivers or dispensaries information because of a weak password.

[Mememe]

Pretty sure only the first 12 or 16 characters are used in pw for confirmation. The rest just gets dumped. Long pw are hard to remember and usually user accts are hacked via lost pw security question guesses.

[+420Atheist]

Now days most passwords can be any length and the full length is used. In the past Micro$oft could only do 15 but that is not so today. I always use complex passwords and recommend others do too. You only need to memorize about three passwords. Your email password should be one you use for nothing else. Once someone has your email they can access everything else. Any online banking is another password you should only use for online baking for obvious reasons. Sites like this can be your third password that you use most everywhere else. Also don't let web sites you make purchases from remember you credit card information.

 

As WhoMe? points out the hackers in support of Wikileaks are not targeting end users. They are after the financial institutions that have cut off Wikileak donations.

 

I fully support Wikileaks. What has this nation come to that they want to prosecute someone who exercises their freedom of speech and freedom of the press? This was all ready decided by the Supreme Court in 1971 when the New York Times won the right to continue publishing the Pentagon Papers. Those papers contained the same type of embarrassing revelations that the Wikileaks case does. Wikileaks is on the side of truth and truth is not treason.

[Kingdiamond]

I fully support Wikileaks. What has this nation come to that they want to prosecute someone who exercises their freedom of speech and freedom of the press?

 

 

Uh huh exactly this guy is the worlds most dangerous whistle blower and thank god for him for having the balls to expose our goverment for what it is .

[uhphrayed]

A good warning and good advice but there's no reason to be scared. Most of the time when someone is "hacked" it's caused by a virus, not by someone guessing a password. So just don't download random files and you'll most likely be ok. The only way someone can guess a password is by a technique called brute forcing which is when a script/bot repeatedly tries to login to an account using random passwords - however most websites you login to have protection for this and will automatically ban the user from accessing the website after so many failed login attempts...and the passwords they try are absolutely stupid. As long as you're using strong passwords you're fine...combine upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and symbols if allowed by the website.

[badbert]

Paranoia is a mean destroyer! Seriously I would not use a computer if I were that worried about it. Buy a good router with a hardware firewall and set it up with mac address access. Passwords do not solve the problem, if they can access your IP address then a simple program like ROCK will give them access to all passwords. A bootable flash drive is the biggest concern out there watch who has access to your computer and setup bios boot passwords. Even then they can reset, but you will know when it has been.

[+EdwardGlen]

Did you memorize them all ? Dispose of all the evidence ?

 

... whatever, surely helpfull advice, just dont lose them.

 

Whatever is right....