How to protect your password from hacking
Today, passwords play a significant role in human life. Everywhere on the Internet, on every site, each account must have its own password in order for the user to gain access to its data. Losing or breaking a password can often result in a big problem and headache.
This article will focus on passwords, hacking methods and creating passwords.
How do passwords break?
There are always at least two ways to crack a password. This is a banal selection (which takes a huge amount of resources and time, but with proper luck, or rather, with due naivety of the user, it will not take an hour) and no less banal “attack of pets”.
Password guessing
Recognize after all somewhere, at least once you set the banal and well-known qwerty password. This is certainly good if it is not in your mailbox through which you can crack almost all your existing passwords. Password guessing is a set of random numbers in the password field and it implies the need to know the account itself. On some sites this is obvious, on others it’s hidden. These are all security issues of the site itself, but what can we do to not be hacked? You will learn about this in the next section, where you can read the recommendations for creating passwords.
Pet attack
On many sites you can observe such a thing as a password recovery form. Often there are about 10 standard questions that you must enter a keyword in response to. So, if an attacker knows your account, then, first of all, he will try this method of attack. In the password recovery form, he will check which question you have installed. And then he will write to you, supposedly to meet you and will try to fetch this answer from you. Believe me, an unsuspecting user often does stupidity by giving the attacker the key in such a relaxed and friendly conversation.
However, there is a way to insure yourself. And he is painfully simple and some experienced information security experts call him frankly idiotic. But this is precisely the key to solving such a difficult task. Try to answer another question from the list, not the one you chose. And always remember that “Your first pet’s nickname” was “Mother’s maiden name”, no matter what his name really is.
Recommendations for passwords and their preparation
Actually, in order to complicate the process of breaking the password, a large number of recommendations are applicable to its selection and preparation, we will try to give only some of the most important ones, but take them apart from head to toe.
Fight with qwerty
Look down at the keyboard and see how these keys are located. No doubt you noticed that they are running in a row. So never do such nonsense. In no case do not allow more than two characters in a row in your password. So, for example, passwords like qwinto or abscuro will be quite effective (they are called strong, that is, those that are difficult to crack), but passwords like qwento or abco will be ineffective, it will take much less time to crack them. When choosing a password, try to avoid alternating characters (alphabetically or by keyboard layout), this can save you from hacking.
Collisions – what is it and how to avoid them
When inventing a key for encryption, try to avoid such stupid things as repeating characters. By itself, the word Collision is already a lousy password, in it we have two letters A coming in a row. With encryption, this will give a considerable number of duplicate characters. And repeating the same character in the password greatly simplifies its selection. Therefore, no matter how you like, try to avoid duplicate characters and use the same letters in your password.
It is long against efficiency
Some people believe that the names of Icelandic volcanoes are great passwords. And let’s be honest, are you ready to memorize 15 characters of text about which you can break the language? And often there are more than a lot of collisions and ordering of symbols in these names. Compare the above parameters with 2 simple passwords (relatively simple, of course):
1) Faithful
2) Yokalatarakoil
If you now thought that a second password is better, then re-read the section on a new one. Let’s see what we have in both cases and what shortcomings we can see in them:
1) A small number of characters, one alphabet is used, no numbers. However, all the characters are pretty scattered in alphabetical order and layout. And in the password we have 6 effective characters.
2) A large number of characters, one alphabet, no numbers. However, we have in this password two letters “k”, “y”, “o” and “l”. We have four letters “a” at once. Therefore, in fact, our password has 6 characters.
You do not need to be seven spans in the forehead to realize that these passwords are equally reliable, regardless of the number of characters used in the second. Therefore, we can safely say that the password is such a thing where the quantity is very rarely intertwined with quality.
