Psssssst!! Whats the password?
March 7, 2014
12356Pa$$wor[)
How’s that one? Nope the nefarious bastards that spend all their time and talent being criminal can crack that. They figured out algorithms to crack passwords with
- real details? My mom’s maiden name is Flubbywacker and the street I grew up on is now Snoobdrow Street.
- Capitals at front? nOt anYmorE
- numbers/punctuation at end? %%BaD11idea++
- first name & date? I’ll use my son’s name and birthdate as a password, Kracklebutt13.32.2014 – perfect.
- mangling with number3 and $ymbols? th3y’11 figur3 1t 0ut 3v3ryt1m3
My passwords got more complex when I met my wife because she insisted on it. I was a capitalize first letter-word from dictionary-end with a number type of guy until I met her.
She also insisted on backing up our computers on a regular basis and I admit that was something I had never even heard of.
One frustration we have now is how spread out our photos are. First there was Ofoto, then it changed to kodakgallery, then she had picasa, but I didn’t like it so we tried snapfish then shutterfly….not to mention all the ones that never made it online that are in 2 different computers now. Ugh. That’s a project we need to catch up on sometime.
I do have a few old emails saved. Interesting stuff that I think I will draw from in the future or just enjoy revisiting. I have had the same email address since 1999. Unfortunately hotmail used to have a very limited amount of available space you were allotted so I had to dump stuff a long time ago. The oldest email I have is from 2002. I’ll cherish it as a badge of honor. My dad is a great writer so I have several emails from him that I used to print out and keep in a book but once hotmail grew I was able to just save them in there.
I am worried about this mid-term! I don’t test well. That explains why I’m a theater performance major instead of something more…..practical? I find our subject matter very interesting but can I relate the information back when needed? We shall see!
Assess your backup and preservation practices. Aids to preservation – you need documentation of how something works, otherwise it will be pretty hard to fix it later. Standards, metadata = where things come from, makes your information usable.
best practice 3-2-1
3 copies in 2 formats in 1 place other than home.
What should be archived?
What are the challenges of preserving born digital records? What do you save, what do you discard? Why is one thing more important than something else? Who are you to decide what future seekers of information might need or not need? Should we just save everything?? Will there someday be a show called Digital Hoarders?
Passwords fail because
- guessed
- lifted from password dump – reusing from multiple sites
- cracked by brute force
- hashed values – a result of a calculation (hash algorithm) that can be performed on a string of text, electronic file or entire hard drives contents
- rainbow tables – a precomputed table for reversing cryptographic hash functions, usually for cracking password hashes
- salting – random data that is used as an additional input to a one-way function that hashes a password or passphrase. The primary function of salts is to defend against dictionary attacks and pre-computed rainbow table attacks.
- stolen by keylogger/malware
- reset by customer support
I have no idea what the terms in orange mean.