Cyber Security Today: More weak passwords, a key to security and compromised web sites

Cyber Security

More weak passwords, a key to security and compromised web sites

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday April 15th. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cyber security for ITWorldCanda.com. To hear the podcast click on the arrow below:

Cyber Security

Trend Micro has discovered a new piece of malware that tries to install a hidden program on your computer to mine for cryptocurrency. So it secretly uses your computing power to benefit a criminal. The best ways for you to avoid being infected are to make sure all your software is regularly updated, be careful about the links you click on in email, the web sites you go to, and use strong, original passwords for logins. What I want to point out is the attack starts with the malware automatically trying to log in to your computer using a list of common, weak passwords. Here’s a few on the list, passwords you must avoid: 123456; password; football; welcome; login; hello; admin; abc123 and keyboard letters in a row, like qwerty. Now, if trying these and other commonly-used stolen passwords don’t work the malware tries more sophisticated login techniques. But if you make it easy for criminals they’ll take advantage of you. So instead of passwords create easier to remember passphrases. As I’ve said before, use a password manager and, where possible, two-factor authentication.

 

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