Archive Pen & Links

Make sure your passwords are safe

January 5, 2009

Or may find this being broadcast to followers around the world.

We’ve been assured that CNN’s Rick Sanchez didn’t call into work because he was high on crack, but his Twitter feed was hacked into. It’s unrelated to a phishing scam that’s been going around and hijacking Twitter accounts.

This is as good a time as any to remind people to make sure your passwords are safe. Try to be creative with how you make them and avoid using real words. Dictionary attacks can be quite common and involve a hacker throwing every word in the dictionary in hopes of cracking a password. Use random letters, numbers and alternate between capital and lowercase words.