cyberscrutiny

[cyberscrutiny]

TLDR:

Use random words or phrases that you can remember (the longer the better). Capitalize the first letter of each word (no spaces). Replace letters with numbers and symbols that look similar and/or makes sense to you so you can remember. Change passwords regularly and use different ones for different accounts. You don't need to use all of these tips, just the ones you can remember.

Bonus Tip:

Have trouble remembering all your passwords? Use a password secured document that holds all your passwords. You only need to remember one this way.

Passwords

A string of letters, numbers, and symbols used to protect an account from being accessed by an outside party.

AKA: a pain in the butt to remember

This is especially true when you use multiple passwords for different accounts AND change them regularly (suggested by security professionals). However, since it is difficult to remember all that information, I'd guess about 70% of us on this website doesn't do what is suggested. We all understand it is a huge problem to use the same simple passwords because they are easy to Crack and then use the same one for every other account we use.

However, with me learning more and more about cybersecurity, this issue is bigger and more dangerous than we think. With this in mind, I have learned different techniques and tricks that make "complicated" passwords easy to remember.

[cyberscrutiny]

BRUTE FORCE ATTACKS

For hackers that REALLY want your password, they will need to use a technique called a brute force attack.

Brute force attacks are essentially a hacker, or more likely a hacker's computer system, randomly or purposely putting in any possible password combinations until they make the right one. They can also use specific parameters to guess it such as password length or only using letters, words, numbers, symbols or a mix of any of these.

Brute force attacks are the reason why some websites freeze attempts to log into your account if you mess up to many times. This will make the hacking process even longer and will likely make the hacker lose interest in your account.

So, what can we do to defend ourselves from this? First, make it long and use random common words. This way, they have to make a ton of guesses in order to Crack your password. A common example of this technique is CorrectHorseBatteryStaple. For this, there are about 44 different letters/symbols/letters you need to put in. After doing the math, it would take about 550 years to Crack it at around 1000 guesses a second. Of course, this could be cracked by a dictionary attack but there are about 170,000 common words we can use so it is difficult to Crack that way too.

The second surefire way to defend yourself is to change your passwords regularly. This way hackers will have less time and less guesses to Crack your password, making it close to impossible to hack your account using brute force. Also, make sure different passwords for different accounts. If they take your main password, they could use it to log into different accounts.

Passwords

A string of letters, numbers, and symbols used to protect an account from being accessed by an outside party.

AKA: a pain in the butt to remember

This is especially true when you use multiple passwords for different accounts AND change them regularly (suggested by security professionals). However, since it is difficult to remember all that information, I'd guess about 70% of us on this website doesn't do what is suggested. We all understand it is a huge problem to use the same simple passwords because they are easy to Crack and then use the same one for every other account we use.

However, with me learning more and more about cybersecurity, this issue is bigger and more dangerous than we think. With this in mind, I have learned different techniques and tricks that make "complicated" passwords easy to remember.

[cyberscrutiny]

DICTONARY ATTACKS

Just so you know, hackers are UNBELIEVABLY lazy, and it shows through their own hacking strategies. The easiest and most common technique is called a dictionary attack. Essentially, dictionary attacks an algorithm or person that uses a list of words and phrases that someone will likely use as a possible password guess or imput.

So what is the best way to defend against this? Well, the greatest weakness of dictionary attacks is that they ONLY use words or phrases, so throughing in a couple of numbers and Capital letters can shut down an attack pretty quickly.

What are some password strategies? To help explain this, I'll be using an example phrase for a password. Let's use tumblrrocks. On its own, a dictionary attacks can easily crack this password, so let's make this more complicated. The first tip I have for you is CamelCasing, aka: capitalize the first letter in each word.

Our new password is now TumblrRocks. Not completely safe from dictionary attacks, but safer than it once was (I personally also capitalize the letter at the end of the word as well to make it even safer).

The next tip is to substitute certain numbers for letters that look similar such as 0 for o, 1 for I or L, 4, for a, 5 for s, 3 for e, etc.

So, for our current example TumblrRocks, we turn it into Tumb1rR0ck5. You can also substitute symbols and other numbers that work for you (personally, I substitute % for N), the trick is to make it easy for YOU to remember.

Passwords

A string of letters, numbers, and symbols used to protect an account from being accessed by an outside party.

AKA: a pain in the butt to remember

This is especially true when you use multiple passwords for different accounts AND change them regularly (suggested by security professionals). However, since it is difficult to remember all that information, I'd guess about 70% of us on this website doesn't do what is suggested. We all understand it is a huge problem to use the same simple passwords because they are easy to Crack and then use the same one for every other account we use.

However, with me learning more and more about cybersecurity, this issue is bigger and more dangerous than we think. With this in mind, I have learned different techniques and tricks that make "complicated" passwords easy to remember.

[cyberscrutiny]

Passwords

A string of letters, numbers, and symbols used to protect an account from being accessed by an outside party.

AKA: a pain in the butt to remember

This is especially true when you use multiple passwords for different accounts AND change them regularly (suggested by security professionals). However, since it is difficult to remember all that information, I'd guess about 70% of us on this website doesn't do what is suggested. We all understand it is a huge problem to use the same simple passwords because they are easy to Crack and then use the same one for every other account we use.

However, with me learning more and more about cybersecurity, this issue is bigger and more dangerous than we think. With this in mind, I have learned different techniques and tricks that make "complicated" passwords easy to remember.

[cyberscrutiny]

Passwords

A string of letters, numbers, and symbols used to protect an account from being accessed by an outside party.

AKA: a pain in the butt to remember

This is especially true when you use multiple passwords for different accounts AND change them regularly (suggested by security professionals). However, since it is difficult to remember all that information, I'd guess about 70% of us on this website doesn't do what is suggested. We all understand it is a huge problem to use the same simple passwords because they are easy to Crack and then use the same one for every other account we use.

However, with me learning more and more about cybersecurity, this issue is bigger and more dangerous than we think. With this in mind, I have learned different techniques and tricks that make "complicated" passwords easy to remember.