New Year, New Password

Eleven years ago, RockYou, a public social application site suffered a data breach exposing all their user’s personal information. The hackers created and released a text file labeled “RockYou” containing over 32 million user accounts and passwords. This file was made available to both the public and the dark web therefore, anybody with a copy of this file can access your account or accounts.  

Last year, the largest data breach in history occurred. This breach called “RockYou2021” exposed 8.4 billion entries on the internet. This recent incident exposed more than twice the amount of information the first data breach had. The TXT file has grown into a 100 GB file and is considered a password dictionary for hackers. This list poses a significant threat to its victims since it can be easily spread throughout the internet and the black market, therefore, allowing hackers to steal your data. Moreover, most people use the same password across various apps and websites which compromises multiple of your accounts. 

It is important to stay cyber secure as we welcome the year so here is a friendly reminder to include changing your passwords in your new year resolution. 

Just like how we lower the risk to our physical bodies by having good personal hygiene, we can also take preventive actions to take care of our online selves by having good password hygiene. According to NordPass, these five tips can help you maintain good password hygiene:

1. We are often clueless when a small inconspicuous website becomes a victim to cybercriminals and hackers. Thus, it is important to analyze all your accounts and remove those that are no longer in use. 
2. You can add an extra layer of protection for your accounts by using Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), whether it’s an app, biometric data, face identification, or a hardware security key. 
3. Regularly check your accounts for suspicious activities. If you discover anything suspicious the best course of action is to change your passwords immediately.
4. Ensure the security of your accounts by updating your passwords and using unique complex passwords. You can use a password generator to create hard-to-guess passwords or create a password that is at least ten characters long that contains a mix of letters, cases and symbols, and numbers. In addition, avoid using common passwords such as “password’ or “admin”. 
5. If remembering all your passwords becomes hard. You can use a password manager to generate and store your passwords. A perfect example of a password manager is LastPass. This password ecosystem allows you to capture and save all your passwords across all your online and offline devices in a password vault. In addition, you can categorize your passwords for easy retrieval, and it works across all your devices. 

It is important to remember not to reuse the same password for any of your accounts. The danger of reusing your password is simple it can be leaked and stolen. A great website to use and check if your credentials have been stolen and act is Have I Been Pwned?

This year make your new years resolution to change your password more frequently.  Trust us!  You won't regret it!

Source:

RockYou 2021 Breach Exposes 8.4 Billion Passwords: Check Now If Your Data Have Been Leaked! | iTech Post

New Year, New Passwords - KG Hawes - Partners in Technology

New year, new passwords: Avoiding hacking in 2020 | Top Stories | nny360.com

Making Passwords Easy! (reisinformatica.com)