Another Large Online Business Compromised by Hackers

I'm sure almost everyone has heard by now about the cyber attack on Gawker Media. Anyone with an account on Gawker, Deadspin, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, io9, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, or any other site hosted on Gawker Media's servers should consider their account compromised and change their password. What many people may not realize is that if you have poor personal security practices online these hackers may now have access to more than just your Gawker account.

This breach of Gawker's security and other recently successful cyber attacks are why internet users need to be more security conscious. “Password” will not protect your personal information on the web. Anyone who uses email or shops online, that is, nearly all internet users should be aware of how critical it is to use good passwords. Identity theft is a big business for tech-savvy criminals and a huge headache for victims.

Many people use the same password and user ID for several or all of their online accounts. This is a very bad idea because it means that once someone has obtained access to one of your accounts they potentially have access to all of them. For the best security vary your user name and use a different password for each online account you have. For extra security, you should change your passwords regularly, many security experts recommend changing your passwords every four to six months.

Certainly, part of the problem for many people is that they have not been educated about what is or isn't a strong password. Strong passwords are more difficult to decipher, or guess, than weak ones. The very strongest passwords contain capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and “special characters” like punctuation, and do not contain common words or phrases. Weak passwords are much easier for malicious software and people to decrypt. Passwords like password, open, letmein, repeating numbers, sequences of numbers, or your user name can be figured out quickly and easily by even the least skilled hackers (like teenagers hoping to “borrow” their parents credit card).

A few years ago, a friend of mine had to explain to his boss why he had used his company credit card to spend $150 to join Hannah Montana's official fan club. His eight year old daughter was able to get the number off of one of his online accounts because he used the same passwords for his home and work computers, his online shopping, and email.

Here is one method security experts use to build secure, strong passwords which you can still remember. Build your password around a “base password” and using a simple formula for each new password. Choose a phrase, for this example we'll use “I moved to Maui in June of 2006.” First, convert it to an acronym: ImtMiJo06. Then, add some special characters: ^ImtMiJo06^. Now you can modify this base for each of your secure log-ins, add gm for gmail and a counter to remind you when you change it: gm^ImtMiJo06^a. You can do this for your amazon shopping cart: az^ImtMiJo06^b, Turbo Tax: bx^ImtMiJo06^c, and anything else you password protect.

Finally, never send passwords or credit card information over email. Email is sent as a stream of unencrypted bytes, so anyone with a packet sniffing bot can read your messages.

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