passwords

Business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn has been hacked. According to new reports, hackers infiltrated the site's systems and stole an estimated 6.5 million passwords. LinkedIn is a social media platform designed with business users in ... mind. It allows members to find past and present colleagues, to search for new jobs, and exchange advice and expertise with workers in their field. It's estimated that approximately 161 million people have LinkedIn accounts, which means that it's no surprise this most recent security breach has caught the attention of many social media users. Stolen ... (view more)

Weak security passwords and overlooked security updates have kept Conficker, a malware 'worm' first reported in 2008, alive and well. According to Microsoft, Conficker has not only survived, it is steadily infecting more corporate networks all the ... time. The Conficker worm was first detected in November, 2008. It targeted networks and tried to penetrate them by guessing at their login passwords. At this, it was surprisingly successful. The main reason for its success was that so many business users employ extremely weak passwords, including '12345', the word 'Password' and the default password ... (view more)

Congress has rejected a bill that would have barred employers from demanding workers reveal their passwords for social networking sites. The vote won't have any immediate effect, but could lead to further legal cases on the issue. The U.S. House of ... Representatives considered the topic as part of a wider bill that aims to limit the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by restricting the way it makes new regulations. There's no guarantee the bill itself would ever become law. Even if it passed the House, it may be rejected by the Senate or vetoed by the President. Representative ... (view more)

A new study conducted by Trustwave, an IT research firm, is providing a startling look at the security vulnerabilities and hacking trends within computer systems used in the business world. For example, the Global Security Report for 2012 shows that ... the most popular computer password selected by business users is "Password1". Of the 2.5 million passwords Trustwave studied in total, about 5 per cent contained the word "password." (Source: slashgear.com ) According to Trustwave, "Password1" is so popular because "it satisfies the default Microsoft Active Directory complexity setting," ... (view more)

Microsoft's online store in India was compromised over the weekend by a group of Chinese hackers calling themselves the "Evil Shadow Team". The hackers were able to extract user IDs and passwords of the site. While many are questioning how the ... hackers were able to breach Microsoft's security system, more troublesome is the realization that the company might not have taken the proper steps to secure the credentials of their customers prior to the attack. Reportedly, Microsoft stored both login IDs and passwords for its users in plain text files, without any encryption system in place to ... (view more)

Picking a password that is both memorable and resistant to cracking is a difficult task. It seems easy to forget a random series of letters and numbers, and it's just as easy to guess (or 'crack') memorable passwords, such as your birthplace, your ... dog's name, or your favorite ball club. So it's helpful that Microsoft is expanding password management in Windows 8 by introducing "picture-based account unlocking," which allows PC users to draw circles, lines, and dots in place of text passwords. Drawing Passwords Hard to Guess Microsoft suggests that accessing an account via a ... (view more)

More than a thousand usernames and passwords from the United Nations (UN) have been published online by hackers. However, initial indications are the attack may not have uncovered anything particularly important. The information was published on ... Pastebin, a website commonly used by hackers releasing details, but who don't want their own sites to be swamped by high traffic. It was published in the name of 'Team Poison', arguably one of the two biggest hacking groups, alongside the better-known Anonymous. The two groups are believed to have recently formed an alliance to target financial ... (view more)

It's only been a couple of months since Sony suffered one of the most devastating hacker attacks in the history of the video game industry. Experts now believe the company could be in the hole for over a billion dollars thanks to the breach, which ... exposed the personal data of over 100 million PlayStation Network (PSN) customers. Now, another game company has also been hacked, exposing the personal information of about 1.3 million customers. It's a smaller attack, to be sure, but evidence that the gaming industry is in no way prepared for such invasions. Sega Hedgehogged by Hackers Sega, one ... (view more)

A security researcher says hackers could take control of millions of routers. Craig Heffner, of security firm Seismic, says half of the models he tested were vulnerable to a recently discovered hack. Routers, which allow an Internet connection to be ... shared among multiple computers, are extremely common -- especially for those of us who use high-speed Internet. Even if you own only one computer and don't share your connection with others in your household or office, chances are you're using a router of some kind. In short, the router acts as a gateway to the Internet and directs traffic back ... (view more)

According to a recent report, most users still haven't answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the most easy to hack passwords, simply typing '123456' took a truly forgettable top prize. ... Security firm Imperva this week released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report "Consumer Password Worst Practices," and some of the entries near the top are truly simple. Worst Password Practices The top three passwords all included the simple streaming of ... (view more)