How You Could Have Stopped the Houston Astros 'Hack'

[Paul Wagenseil]

The 'hack' of the Houston Astros was made possible by really dumb user mistakes. Here's how to be smarter than a baseball official.

How You Could Have Stopped the Houston Astros 'Hack' : Read more

 

[Arrias117]

"...digits, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and punctuation marks"

Please, stop perpetuating this. Every time I see this listed in password requirements for any system it makes me die a little inside. Length matters near infinitely much more than "complexity". All this does is create passwords that are harder for the average user to remember.

You want a secure password? Use a passphrase. (ex: "thispasswordissomuchbetterthanyourpassword")

 

[Paul Wagenseil]

And that would be a lot stronger if it were "th15p455w0Rd!i5b3tter?th4Ny0urp455w0rd#".

 

[Arrias117]

And that would be a lot stronger if it were "th15p455w0Rd!i5b3tter?th4Ny0urp455w0rd#".

That password is ONLY stronger if the offender is absolutely sure the previous example password is only lower case. Also, mine is memorable for a user. Yours would be "more secure" right up until I walked past the average user's desk and saw it written down on a sticky note on their desk. I'd much rather we encourage people to make us of passwords that are both difficult to crack AND easy to remember as opposed to the opposite for short complex passwords.