An article on password security - or the complete lack of - makes for interesting reading, hi-lighting the ease of which some passwords can, in some cases, almost be guessed without any effort required. A recent hacking of stored passwords at one organization, and then the subsequent publishing by the hacker, of that list, proves for interesting, and in some cases frightening, reading of the following article.
In a report likely to make IT administrators tear out their hair, most users still rely on easy passwords, some as simple as "123456," to access their accounts.
A report released today by database security vendor Imperva Inc. serves as another reminder of why IT administrators need to enforce strong password policies on enterprise applications and systems.
Imperva's report is based on an analysis of 32 million passwords that were exposed in a recent database intrusion at RockYou Inc., a developer of several popular Facebook applications. The passwords, which belonged to users who had registered with RockYou, had been stored by the company in clear text on the compromised database. The hacker responsible for the intrusion later posted the entire list of 32 million passwords on the Internet.
Source and the article in full @
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9147138/Users_still_make_hacking_easy_with_weak_passwords?source=CTWNLE_nlt_security_2010-01-22
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Topic: Password security - still not taken seriously enough? (Read 92 times)
