Protect Yourself Against Password Cracking
One of the most common forms of hacking is password cracking, and there are plenty of tools to help hackers achieve their goals here quickly and easily, before you even know what happened. The best way to avoid password cracking and protect yourself is to get the computer support Sydney trusts. Getting the IT support Sydney needs is very important to protecting your interests.
In the meantime, there are a few precautions that you can take before you get the best computer support Sydney offers. Below are some tips to keep you a little safer from the hacking of your password, until the IT support Sydney gives kicks in for your web site.
1. Use different passwords for different accounts.
The first mistake that many people make is to use the same password for everything – their email, their bank accounts, their health records, credit cards, etc. Use different passwords so that if one of them is hacked, the hacker does not have full access to all of your records and personal financial information. If they gain access to everything, they can more easily steal your identity and wreak further havoc. Also, the first thing that a password cracker will do is to try the password that was successful on other accounts. If your passwords are all the same, change them immediately, memorize them, or keep the written passwords in an extremely safe place (maybe on an old computer that is never connected to the Internet).
2. Use 3D passwords.
The 3D password will protect against many brute force attacks. A brute force attack is when a password cracker will simply attempt to guess your password. There are many programs which help them do this much faster than by hand. The three dimensions that are being referred to are numbers, letters, and special characters like $ or #. Make sure to have at least one special character in your password to divert the brute force attack and software.
3. Use a password of acceptable length.
The longer your password, the harder that it is to crack. Go to the maximum number of characters allowed, if you can remember that long of a password.
4. Do not use common names, birthdays, or words of any kind in a password.
There is a type of brute force attack known as a dictionary attack. In a dictionary attack, a password cracker will assume that you have a word inside of your password. The software that implements a dictionary attack will very quickly place words added to special symbols around that word to guess your password. You can avert this by simply not putting normal words in your password.
5. Install a firewall.
The more sophisticated password hacker will not attempt to brute force a password – they have a much more effective technique called taking advantage of an exploit. An exploit in a program is a weakness in the coding which allows a password cracker to “see” inside and steal a password.
Software exploits can be averted via a firewall. Make sure that you have a strong one implemented on your computer. Also, make sure to update your software when they come out with patches, because many of these updates are to patch up vulnerabilities that are found within the program, many of which are found as people report instances of being cracked. Do this especially if you have a Microsoft heavy computer, because there is a lot of hacker attention focused on exposing vulnerabilities within Microsoft programs.
6. Avoid socially engineered cracking tricks.
Those messages in your inbox from a trusted source asking for your password are fakes. Anyone who has to ask for your password online or over the phone is not a company that you should do business with in the first place. Do not give your password out over the Internet for any reason.