We've all heard the lectures about password security 100 times.  We know the basics like "don't use real words," "no names of your family members," and "the most common password is the word "god."  We've heard these things before and I think most of us have a false sense of security about our how secure our lives are.

These days, password cracking tools are freely available on the internet.  "Hackers" with almost no skills download powerful tools that rapidly attempt to guess a password using combinations of every word in the dictionary and every name.  Personal computers are becoming more and more powerful meaning that the time it takes to attempt these brute force password attempts becomes shorter and shorter.  Also, new password cracking algorithms such as rainbow tables are becoming accessible, even to people that don't know how to use them.

On top of that, most people use the same password for everything.  Their personal email accounts, their banks, their retirement accounts, their facebook etc.  If not exactly the same, then some variation of the same.  If a hacker guesses your password for one account, what kind of access to destroy your life do they have?

My final argument in favor of paranoia is this: Let's assume bank websites are secure.  Those institutions put a premium on defending their customers from hacking attempts or internet vulnerabilities, so let's just assume those places are hack-proof.  Addditionally, let's assume those sites are the one place where we keep a ridiculously long, very secure password that is different from every other website we use.  Are we safe in this scenario?  If I were a hacker, I would avoid bank sites assuming they're too hard.  Instead, I would go after an email site.  I would assume people keep less secure passwords for their email and therefore they are easier to get into.

What kind of information would a hacker have access to if he could gain full access to my email account.  There's not really anything sensitive in my email account by itself.  What I'm concerned about is how many other secure websites are tied to my email account.  For instance, could a hacker go to my bank website and click the "I forgot my password" link and have my bank send a new password to my now compromised email account?  What about my 401k website or my investment account.  The possibilites are enough to keep me up at night.

So, what can we do?

First, follow good password behaviors.

• Keep a separate, secure password for each website. 
  

I know how daunting this is, but there are tools to make it easier.  Keepass is a free, open-source password database that is a highly encrypted place to store passwords.  It will even auto-generate passwords that are as complicated as you want them to be.  You only have to remember one password to open your entire database of passwords.  It has the ability to copy and paste passwords so you don't have to type them and you can store the url's for important websites right in the app.  There are versions of keepass that you can keep on a usb thumb drive or even on your phone.  Another tool to make a secure life easier is Roboform - it has the same master password concept as keepass but will auto fill in website passwords once logged in.
 

• Don't use real words in your passwords

A trick to make this easier to live with is to substitute symbols or numbers for letters.  For instance, if you want your password to be the phrase "world wide web," subtitute the lettering for something similar to "W0rldw1dew3b!"  It's easy to remember and won't be found in any dictionary.  Remember to use a mixture of lowercase and capital letters as well.

You can also use passwords based on phrases that are important to you.  The phrase "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" would become something like "tLimsIsnw." 

Patterns on the keyboard are equally efficient.  For instance, start on the bottom row with the letter "z" and click through to the "m" and then do the same patter in reverse on the top row of keys.  Easy to remember, difficult to crack.

• Change your passswords periodically

I recommend changing passwords frequently, at least every 90 days.  As personal computers get faster and faster, this can help keep you ahead of any password cracking attempts.  The longer your password is, the longer it takes to crack.

• Keep your passswords at least 8 characters long

Hopefully, a good password policy will keep you out of heartache.  A little extra precaution goes a long way in this always connected world we live in.

A couple of weeks ago I was helping a client with an issue with their VPN.  Basically, a vendor that they use for support of a vertical application could no longer remotely connect to their server.  After investigating the issue and making sure that I could VPN into their network, I called the Software Vendor.  I merely stated,"I am calling from company XYZ and you said that our VPN was not working." This is where it gets interesting.  I ask the vendor if they are able to connect now that we confirmed the VPN worked, so they tested and informed me that they still could not connect.  I asked the technician if he could open telnet and try to connect to the IP address over port 1723.  He did not know how to do this and I was eager to resolve the problem, so I quickly asked, "Do you mind if I connect to your computer and try to troubleshoot the problem?"  To my astonishment the technician said, "Sure".  I guided the gullible technician to logmeinrescue and proceeded to walk him through letting ME onto HIS computer.  Once on his computer I tried to pull up telnet but it was Windows 7 and by default there was no telnet application available.  I then asked if I could download Putty so that I could test the telnet ability.  He said, "Go for it."  I was again astonished at the disreguard for the control he was giving me.  I then confirmed through the use of Putty that telnet was immediately getting dropped.  I speculated that it was their firewall blocking PPTP outbound.  He checked  with an IT guy that was strolling by and confirmed that they were blocking outbound PPTP.  They asked for the IP address so that they could add it to the firewall, so I told them the external IP address of the firewall they were trying to connect to.  Now the icing on the cake, the IT guy uses the computer that I am remote controlling to access their CISCO ASA.  He logs into the web management of the ASA and proceeds to create the rule to allow the PPTP to get through.  Now I am mesmerized by the lack of security.  I even corrected the IT guys spelling on the firewall. 

Now that the exciting turn of events are over, I reflect on what happened.  How easy was it for me to get on their network?  Pretty easy.  All I needed was 3 pieces of information:

1. I needed to know the name of the company who was in need of support.
2. I needed to know the Key Line if Business Application and the company who made it.
3. I needed to know the problem. 

These 3 things are pretty easy to determine and even ask for and easily get the information about. 

This is called Social Hacking.  All I needed was a good attitude, frinedly personality, and a few bits of info and I was able to get on their network.  The point here is that it should not be that easy to get on their computer since I called them. It is not like the called me asking for help.  I called them to give help.  They thought the problem was way down stream at their clients firewall. 

Simple rule, never give donations to someone that calls you, always call them to give donations AND never accept techincal support remote control from someone that called you to tell you about a problem that you have that you don't even know.

By the way, once they added the rule to the firewall, the VPN worked.