Phishing Lessons, Hotmail Style
If you watch the news, read the papers, and/or peruse tech Web sites, you will be aware of a recent “news item” that thousands of people’s Hotmail login credentials had been stolen in a “phishing scam” and posted on the Internet. Just shy of 10,000 of them…
You may also be aware that Hotmail was not the only target of this scam (see Yahoo, Gmail passwords also phished in far-reaching scam).
But you might not be aware of the analysis that security researchers have done in the aftermath of this “incident”, and some of the conclusions they have come to. That is what I found interested, and followed up on.
Lesson 1:
The research found that the most common password used was “123456”.
All I can say is, I am not surprised. What I really want to say is not fit to print.
The next most popular user password was, “123456789”.
People — this is not good. Passwords are the primary means to prevent unauthorized access. Put a simpler way, a password keeps Joe Criminal from reading your e-mail (and sending a letter to your boss telling said boss to go fly a kite).. or transferring your saving account balance into his.
123456 is the world’s worst password (“password” is no good either), and if you did not know that, please read A Word About Words — Passwords, That Is and find out what you need to know about passwords. Pretty please with sugar on top?
Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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