Our Online Passwords are so Easy that Most “Hacking” Doesn’t Require Actual Hacking
It does not always take a great deal of effort to hack a computer system and even with firewalls and virus protection installed; it is possible to gain access. It just takes someone who knows or even guesses the password and username, and they will…
It does not always take a great deal of effort to hack a computer system and even with firewalls and virus protection installed; it is possible to gain access. It just takes someone who knows or even guesses the password and username, and they will soon be able to treat the machine and data as their own.
Verizon produces an annual report regarding breaches of data, and it is seen as the report that is of great importance within the industry. According to the latest one, 63% of data breaches take place as a result of the password and username not being strong enough. If it was not because they were weak, it was because they were stolen. Sometimes the attacks are well targeted and in others are opportunistic.
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It is a common occurrence for a number of reasons not least because people often use a password that will be obvious to people who know them, or somehow linked to the site that they are using. Sometimes the person will be tricked into revealing the password as an email is received claiming to be from a bank or company, and the receiver clicks on a link or gives away important details.
There is a second problem, and this is the fact that many sites don’t insist that users take part in two-step authentication. In this process, additional information has to be entered after the password. This will either be selected parts of another password, or a code sent to a phone or email account and is the way forward.
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Rachel Kowalski
Rachel Kowalski is the Cybersecurity Analyst at TrendinTech, where she covers vulnerabilities, ransomware, supply chain attacks, nation-state operations and the security rules shaping organizations in the United States and Europe. Before moving into journalism she worked as a threat intelligence analyst at a security vendor and later reported for CyberScoop and the security desk at Wired, covering the SolarWinds compromise and the ransomware wave that hit hospitals and pipelines. Rachel holds a Master of Science in Cybersecurity from the Georgia Institute of Technology and attends Black Hat and DEF CON in Las Vegas each year, where she follows research from the security community. She writes to make risks and countermeasures understandable to people who are not specialists.
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