Scott Wright’s Security Views

This breach (HERE) occurred at a university in Michigan when a hacker compromised two servers and used them to launch attacks on other computers outside the university. When hackers take control of a computer (usually without the knowledge of the system’s owner), the system is said to be “owned” by the hackers.

By the way, there were apparently databases containing personal addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers of 5,500 students on the servers that were compromised.

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Having weak passwords certainly can make life difficult for everyone. Nobody likes having to recover or change all their identity cards and information when their password gets compromised. But there is a point of diminishing returns when adding rules to user-chosen passwords.

In general, the more sensitive the information that an account has access to, the stronger the authentication method should be. Passwords are the most convenient method for most organizations, and for their users. They work well most of the time, especially with accounts that have limited functionality that can be exploited, or limited useful information.

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With all the sites and programs that require you to have passwords, it is becoming a necessity to have a strategy for choosing good passwords that you can remember, yet are strong enough for protecting your sensitive information online.

You may have noticed that password rules vary from site to site. (I’ll talk about Web sites in this article, but this could just as easily apply to programs that run on your computer.) Usually, the strictness of the password rules increases with the sensitivity of the information being protected by the password.

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This breach (click HERE) apparently occurred at a service provider, whose employee stole and sold 2.2 million individuals’ personal information; 99,000 of them had credit card info.

What went wrong?

The individual, a senior database administrator who had worked at the company for seven years, saw the opportunity, didn’t think he’d get caught, and took the chance. Continue Reading »