The Alternative Broadcasting Online News Station

A strong password can be your only defence against hacker’s attacks. The necessity of having passwords that cannot be easily guessed was brought out by a research on hacking activities carried out by Microsoft recently.

Microsoft used a bait to attract hackers and studied their methods in cracking passwords. The bait was a FTP server with information attractive to hackers. The server logged the activities that hackers carried out during the attack.

When studied, this log revealed that hackers while cracking passwords of user accounts typically use combinations that are easy to remember. Combinations like ‘123456′, ‘changeme’, ‘password’ and ”#!comment’ were found to be the first few attempts made by hackers for cracking passwords.

Considering that a lot of sensitive and personal data are stored on the internet, these word combinations assume great significance in determining the safety of your information. Beginning from banking to shopping online, a huge number of activities are done today over the internet, and these activities require a secure online platform/domain that in all probability will be password protected. As more and more people continue to prefer carrying out their activities online, the strength of the passwords used assumes great importance.

The research has prompted Microsoft to advise on how an ideal password should be created. Users should select a combination of upper and lower case characters in their passwords. A good sprinkling of special characters can help immensely in preventing hackers from guessing passwords. User who cannot think of a secure password can use websites that generate strong passwords for help. Else, users can run their passwords through Microsoft’s password checker and see if they are adequately safe.

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