Today's passwords suck!

A few nights ago, a group of hackers hijacked over 2 million usernames and passwords for various social media sites; including Facebook. These were then published online for the world to see and use. I have to say with all this talk on cyber security...there's just one thing that people fail to do; make strong passwords.

The entire list primarily consisted of poorly created passwords; "123456", "password" and even one that was "000000" filled the released list and it made me laugh out loud; how can people be so stupid when it comes to protecting themselves for this kind of attack? Any modern password cracking software can easily break into an account with the password "123456" in less than 10 seconds....10 SECONDS. No wonder why these hackers could get 2 million of these horrid creations. 

Then again...anyone making a password will most likely use something they'll remember easily and that my friends...is where the problem lies.

The key to internet security doesn't necessarily lie in a specific browser or its extensions (It helps, obviously). It does however lie in good password management. First...any good password is at least 12 to 19 characters long and is a mix of symbols, numbers and upper and lower case letters. Secondly, this password should never be the same one after a month and should be changed frequently to maintain security. Third....NEVER SHARE YOUR PASSWORD....EVER. The only real exception to this is if the person is a qualified IT specialist that has to use your password to access account settings and work their magic to solve your problems; however...that being said...don't just give your code to the first guy that says he's in IT; know who you're talking to. Finally....NEVER EVER USE YOUR BANK NUMBERS AND PIN NUMBERS AS A COMPUTER PASSWORD! This is basically shooting yourself in the face if someone gets a hold of that code and means that the same person could go in and make a muck out of your financial bills. Use a password that has absolutely nothing to do with your bank (or your personal life for that matter); you'll stay safer that way.

All in all, this isn't a challenging thing to understand, yet people are so lazy that they'll settle for just about anything. Well, those same people are on that list of exposed passwords and are probably thinking to themselves "Aw gee.....I wonder why that happened". Well....when you have a password that's "12345"...you're basically asking for it.

SpaceBalls sums up my case very nicely