Employing obscenity in passwords–either for the personal amusement or just to feel alive for once in your sorry life–is a longstanding tradition hearkening back to the AOL dialup days of yore when “b00b!es” was your password of choice. But cellular overlord AT&T has no use for either your filthy mind or adorable nostalgia: as Twitter Read More
Well, this is just a charming development. According to The Verge, there’s an exploit making the rounds that’s practically an idiot-proof way for anyone who’s got your email and birthdate to hack your iCloud account.
Basically, your mom could pull this off, if she’s the nosy type. Read More
In light of the recent hacks of big brand Twitter accounts like Burger King and Jeep, Twitter has finally announced two-factor authentication. Haha JK, they just published a condescending blog post blaming their security vulnerabilities on your shitty passwords.
If you think malware is the biggest threat to Internet security, perhaps you should think back to the last time you actually used a good, strong password. Two Google researchers recently submitted a paper to the IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine that argues that weak passwords are actually a bigger threat to online security than any of that malware embedded in those crappy porn sites you frequent.
Google’s proposed solution to the Great Password Scare of 2012-2013? Literally put a ring on it. Read More
Maybe Mat Honan is right–for all the importance we place on them, passwords don’t really work worth a damn. Many privacy breaches skip straight to the goodies, like social security and credit card numbers. The latest illustration: Reuters reports that NASA is telling employees that a laptop packed with personal information was lifted from a (locked) car.
Apparently there’s so much information “that must be reviewed and validated,” it could take as long as 60 days to notify everyone involved.
Free credit monitoring for everyone! Read More
Gmail has improved its search capabilities, making it possible to now search for emails by size or specific date parameters. This should make finding all those embarrassing emails you sent to your ex even easier. [Gmail Blog]
NY Senator Charles Schumer proposed an initiative yesterday that would create two new high school diplomas that focus on promoting high-tech industries. Gotta start ‘em young? [Press Connects]
The Queen of England prefers the Galaxy Note over the iPad for some unknown reason. [CNET]
Here’s something to alarm you before 9 a.m.: Mat Honan, the Wired writer who was famously hacked, on why passwords are basically useless in protecting your personal information. [Wired]
Americans are too prudish to get into the spirit of fancy butt-washing Japanese toilets. [Priceonomics]
Those who received an email from Twitter warning that they should reset their passwords might greet this admission in Twitter’s status blog with some irritation. Twitter admits: yeah, they kind of screwed that up.
Don’t get too mad, though–Twitter only had our best interests at heart. It’s just that in a fairly normal investigation of compromised accounts, someone at Twitter HQ may have gotten a little carried away: Read More
The Cold War is over and Russia and America are getting along. So surely the Men in Black behind the United States’ cyber weapons program based at Area 51 or wherever will not be too concerned that a Russian researcher cracked an encoded password associated with the now infamous, allegedly American-made Flame malware.
Symantec and Kaspersky recently teamed to pick apart Flame’s command and control systems, discovering at least three previously unknown infectious scripts in the process. The researchers also discovered a great deal about how the weapons were assembled and launched against enemy targets, but were left with a hashed passcode they couldn’t break. They put out a call for help but didn’t need the assistance of anyone outside either outfit, after all: Read More
If nothing else, hackers’ exploits in the last couple of years have revealed the frailty of the password protection system. With that in mind, Intel Labs has developed a biometric device and software that could essentially turn the patterns of veins in our palms into biological bar codes. On Thursday Sridhar Iyengar, Intel’s director of security research, revealed the system to an annual Intel Developer Forum: Read More
We don’t want to scare anyone, but Dan Goodin’s Ars Technica article published late Monday illustrates at length why everyone who uses the Internet for anything at all should consider changing their passwords. Actions that once required supercomputing can be done from desktops now and when it comes to security, that’s spooky stuff: Read More
