Calculating your password strength is fairly simple mathematically. Take the number of characters to choose from (26 for just lower case letters, 52 for upper and lower case letters, etc) and raise it to the power of the number of characters in your password. For example PassWord would be 52 ^ 8. And while that […]
When hackers go on a “phishing trip” they are going out trying to get you to give them your username/password, and it all starts with an email. Now, of course, you’d never do that. You’re way to smart for that… aren’t you. A Phishing attempt however knows that you are smart, and will try to […]
Simply put: a password manager is an application which you can use to track your usernames and passwords. The data will be stored encrypted and you will have to provide a master password (usually) to access your passwords. Here you can list what server you use them on, the username, the password, and often add […]
Imagine you log into your Facebook or Instagram account and find that it’s been hacked. Someone learned of your password, and now they have access. Luckily, aside from a few embarrassing posts, there’s not much wrong there. You delete the posts, make a few mea culpas, and people forget about it after a few weeks. […]
A dictionary attack is used by hackers by trying potential passwords from a prearranged list or lists of words and/or known passwords. Typically these lists are derived from a list of common words found in a dictionary (hence the phrase dictionary attack), a list of common non-word passwords (like qwerty, 123456, etc) or a common […]
Two factor authentication, sometimes called 2FA, requires that two different pieces of information be presented in order to allow access to a system. Which two forms of authentication will vary from system to system, but there are several common methods we’ll look at below. The most common one that people are familiar with would be […]