This New Year, why not resolve to ditch your dodgy old passwords?
Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your passwords too?
Jan 3, 2022
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13
Security
Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your passwords too?
Jan 3, 2022
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13
Security
Microsoft wants you to ditch your password. For good, this time.
Sep 15, 2021
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218
Security
When it comes to passwords, the challenges are endless. We must create multiple passwords to manage our many online accounts, from email to shopping sites and social media profiles. We have to safely keep track of these many ...
Aug 11, 2021
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Internet
Back in 2009, threat actors hacked into the website servers of social app RockYou, accessing over 32 million user passwords stored in plaintext. Now, in what appears to be the largest data breach in history, attackers have ...
Internet
Research from James Cook University shows increasingly complex website password restrictions often leave users frustrated and lead to poor password security.
May 7, 2021
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55
Consumer & Gadgets
Password managers are considered highly effective tools for increasing online security. A study presented at the 2019 Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security surveyed a predominately young population about their use of password ...
Jan 8, 2021
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6
Security
After nearly a decade of studies, the passwords research group in Carnegie Mellon's CyLab Security and Privacy Institute has developed a policy for creating passwords that maintains balance between security and usability—one ...
Oct 21, 2020
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153
Security
Hack attempts are on the rise—as always—with ransomware the most common now, according to Microsoft.
Sep 30, 2020
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5
Internet
Passwords have been used for thousands of years, as a means of identifying ourselves to others and in more recent times, to computers. It's a simple concept—a shared piece of information, kept secret between individuals ...
Sep 15, 2020
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11
Internet
Dropbox launched a trio of new services, and one of them will remember your passwords so you don't have to.
Aug 14, 2020
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A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource (Example: An access code is a type of password). The password must be kept secret from those not allowed access.
The use of passwords is known to be ancient. Sentries would challenge those wishing to enter an area or approaching it to supply a password or watchword. Sentries would only allow a person or group to pass if they knew the password. In modern times, user names and passwords are commonly used by people during a log in process that controls access to protected computer operating systems, mobile phones, cable TV decoders, automated teller machines (ATMs), etc. A typical computer user may require passwords for many purposes: logging in to computer accounts, retrieving e-mail from servers, accessing programs, databases, networks, web sites, and even reading the morning newspaper online.
Despite the name, there is no need for passwords to be actual words; indeed passwords which are not actual words may be harder to guess, a desirable property. Some passwords are formed from multiple words and may more accurately be called a passphrase. The term passcode is sometimes used when the secret information is purely numeric, such as the personal identification number (PIN) commonly used for ATM access. Passwords are generally short enough to be easily memorized and typed.
For the purposes of more compellingly authenticating the identity of one computing device to another, passwords have significant disadvantages (they may be stolen, spoofed, forgotten, etc.) over authentications systems relying on cryptographic protocols which are more difficult to circumvent.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA