How to prevent hacking

[gigantes]

ah, cool.

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

[Happy Joe]

Good site... Thanx!
Enjoy!

[dustinzgirl]

Everything mentioned above.

Also, you have to wonder how hackers get your passwords and log ins?

Its actually pretty simple. See, there are programs that just run dictionaries, so if your pass/log in is any word or combo of words in a dictionary, you can be hacked. There are other, more elaborate programs that run probability functions of letter/number combos, but thats a little rarer. Best bet is to keep your antivirus, firewall, ect up to date and have log in and passwords that are letter/number combinations. Don't use names. So, for example: You1rN4m3 is harder to hack than YourName is.

[gigantes]

Originally Posted by dustinzgirl

So, for example: You1rN4m3 is harder to hack than YourName is.

that was true at one time... doesn't seem to be true anymore:
How to Pick a Genuinely Secure Password : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

[MolotovCocktail]

Luckily for me, I typically employ non-english words for mine...

[MolotovCocktail]

Oh, by the way, thanks for the info!

[mosaix]

The problem people have with passwords is that they the more complex they are to crack, the more difficult they are to remember leading to people writing them down - fatal.

Alternatively if people want them to be easy to remember, they make them simple and hence, easy to crack.

Here a good way to generate a passord.

1) Take a dictionary and find three, four character words, at random.

2) String them together into a single password

3) Change all O's to zeroes, all i's to 1's, e's to 3's. Or anything else you can think of.

4) Capitalise some letters according to a private rule.

Here's and example:

does, hilt, ride

Becomes D03sh1ltR1D3

Looking at the password it seems be a random jumble of letters but, infact, as long as the first three words are remembered then the rest follows. In this case I chose to capitalise all d's and r's but I could have chosen say, the first and last characters - so long as the rule is memorable.

By the way don't stick with three, four character words if you don't want. 2 x 6 or 4 x 3 are just as good. The point is that they are memorable TO YOU, and so are the remaining rules.

[gigantes]

Change all O's to zeroes, all i's to 1's, e's to 3's. Or anything else you can think of.

unfortunately this is too common to be of any use.

much more effective is to take the whole password and write it upside down. the password crack programs do not look for that kind of thing since it's so uncommon.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by gigantes

Change all O's to zeroes, all i's to 1's, e's to 3's. Or anything else you can think of.

unfortunately this is too common to be of any use.

much more effective is to take the whole password and write it upside down. the password crack programs do not look for that kind of thing since it's so uncommon.

gigantes, I agree it is common. But can be used as an effective strategy when combined with other techniques, including writing it upside down if you want to. BTW by upside down did you mean back-to-front?

The important thing is to make the password unrecognisable to dictionary look up techniques but also be memorable, or if not memorable then deduceable from a memorable starting point. If people have difficulty memorising their password then they just become more and more simple and less and less effective.

[gigantes]

i'm not disagreeing with anything else you say, mosaix. it's good advice IMO.

but using the common number symbols to replace letters is useless, either by itself or combined with any other method, because hackers have already expanded their base alphabet to include such symbols. this didn't just happen recently btw. for more info on this (and lots of other aspects of PW encryption and hacking), read christopher null's articles linked above.

upside down = nmop ap!sdn

few people use that, therefore the hackers haven't bothered integrating that into their algorythms yet.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by gigantes

i'm not disagreeing with anything else you say, mosaix. it's good advice IMO.

but using the common number symbols to replace letters is useless, either by itself or combined with any other method, because hackers have already expanded their base alphabet to include such symbols. this didn't just happen recently btw. for more info on this (and lots of other aspects of PW encryption and hacking), read christopher null's articles linked above.

upside down = nmop ap!sdn

few people use that, therefore the hackers haven't bothered integrating that into their algorythms yet.

Thanks gigantes - now I see - good idea.

[Leonardo]

How about this. Don't piss off any hackers?

This whole thread is way paranoid. It's not as if hackers hack at complete random. And besides. Why would anyone hack into your computer? To steal your homework? Listen to your mp3's? Change your background picture? I've been more online than offline since I was twelve years old, and I've never used neither a firewall nor an antivirus program. All you need is common sense. If your computer is acting strange, figure out why and fix it. Reinstall windows now and then. Don't have "password" or "1234" as your password. Don't execute files unless you know what they do.

And just so you know. Symantec Anti Virus thinks everything is a trojan. Oh no, you've got a swf file that has a password module in it. TROJAN. Oh no, this mp3 file has a foreign character in the name. TROJAN Stop worrying so much.

[gigantes]

lol... i guarantee you that every hacker and spammer in the world loves you, leonardo, and appreciates the fact that you would give anyone else that advice.

[Leonardo]

Yeah, now they can finally access your shareware screensavers. That'll pay the bills for sure. In fact, maybe I am a hacker spy, an undercover agent sent solely to make people uninstall their anti-hack programs so that my brothers-in-spam can launch their attack to rename your recycle bin and change your MSN chat logging directory. MY PLOT HAS BEEN UNCOVERED. RETREAT!

[gigantes]

or maybe you have no idea how they operate and what they're really looking for.