Amazon, Reddit And Others Fail To Warn Us About Dumb Passwords

Believe it or not, there is still a large number of people who use passwords such as “password,” “password123”, “[dog’s name]1” and others along the same lines. And in the era of sophisticated hacking, these passwords are not exactly “safe.”

Before me, this is the first thing websites should inform you while setting up a password. But apparently, many big names are not doing enough to encourage non-terrible passwords, according to the new research.

Steve Furnell from the University of Plymouth has been keeping tabs on the websites like Amazon, Reddit, and Wikipedia for many years, carrying out similar assessments in 2007, 2011 and 2014.

His 2018 survey examined practices of Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Microsoft Live, and Netflix. The study concluded that Amazon had the worst performance among all the names. It nearly accepted every kind of password of any length. On the other hand, Yahoo and Wikipedia even allowed passwords with single characters.

On the contrary, the survey saw Google, Yahoo and Microsoft showing improvements in the password practices from the last study of 2014.

Steve thinks it is alarming that after a decade of continuously highlighting the issues, essential websites on the internet fail to encourage for good passwords in the era of global cyber attacks. However, what could be seen as a positive thing is the increasing presence of options like two-step verification and two-factor authentication among others.

“With over ten years between the studies, it is somewhat disappointing to find that the overall story in 2018 remains largely similar to that of 2007. In the intervening years, much has continued to be written about the failings of passwords and the ways in which we use them, but little is being done to encourage or oblige us to follow the right path,” says Steve in his research.

Comments

[Guide] How to Protect Your Devices Against Meltdown and Spectre Attacks

Recently uncovered two huge processor vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Spectre have taken the whole world by storm, while vendors are rushing out to patch the vulnerabilities in its products. The issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, FreeBSD, and more), smartphones and other computing devices made in the past 20 years. What are Spectre and Meltdown? We have explained both, Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715), exploitation techniques in our previous article. In short, Spectre and Meltdown are the names of security vulnerabilities found in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD that could allow attackers to steal your passwords, encryption keys and other private information. Both attacks abuse 'speculative execution' to access privileged memory—including those allocated for the kernel—from a low privileged user process like a malicious app running...

Unlocked phones vs. locked phones: Why you should care

Should you get an unlocked phone? The US wireless market is more competitive than ever, which is great news for consumers who have lots of choices when it comes choosing a service provider. But one barrier still exists when trying to switch carriers: the locked smartphone. The end of wireless contracts marked a watershed trend for consumers because it finally opened the door for them to more easily shop around for alternative wireless carriers. But the software locks that carriers put on phones restricting its use on other networks still prevent many consumers from having total freedom when it comes to choosing a provider. Now Verizon, the only wireless carrier that sold its phones unlocked out of the box, is reversing course. The company said earlier this week it would begin locking the phones it sells to consumers for an undetermined period of time, which will prevent them from using a SIM card from another carrier. But Verizon promised it would eventually ...

Watch Out! New Cryptocurrency-Mining Android Malware is Spreading Rapidly

Due to the recent surge in cryptocurrency prices, threat actors are increasingly targeting every platform, including IoT, Android, and Windows, with malware that leverages the CPU power of victims' devices to mine cryptocurrency. Just last month, Kaspersky researchers spotted fake antivirus and porn Android apps infected with malware that mines Monero cryptocurrency, launches DDoS attacks, and performs several other malicious tasks, causing the phone's battery to bulge out of its cover. Now, security researchers at Chinese IT security firm Qihoo 360 Netlab discovered a new piece of wormable Android malware, dubbed ADB.Miner , that scans wide-range of IP addresses to find vulnerable devices and infect them to mine digital cryptocurrency. According to the researchers, ADB.Miner is the first Android worm to reuse the scanning code programmed in Mirai—the infamous IoT botnet malware that knocked major Internet companies offline last ...

Tech Knock

Search This Blog