security – Page 9

Reply #13106

This is a reply to a post published elsewhere. Its content might be duplicated as a traditional comment at the original source.

Sian wrote:

People are funny. I get to look at the accounts of people who have signed up for Children First newsletter updates, and their passwords make me laugh. The number of people who’s password question is just their password is scary.
I also worry for the person who put their password question as ‘opposite of goodbye’.
Guess the password guys! Yes, it’s Hello!
Password Question: Mums Name. Password: Councillor (What?? The cruelty!)
Password Question: favourite game. Password: Boggle (yay!)
Password Question: Fish. Password: Dolphin (…?)

Most popular theme is pets name, so I’m glad pets have a purpose in this day and age. Another popular theme is the Magic Roundabout which worries me somewhat.

Anyways, I’m sure this is against some sort of rule but I found it funny.

The passwords should be one-way encrypted. Your system is insecure. This is evident by the fact that you can read everybody’s passwords. =o)

Alex, my incompetent co-worker, came up with the following gem in today’s meeting when talking about a product that would aid employers in securely tracking how long their employees actually spend working:

“It’s not going to have any of that… security… nonsense.”

I shall have to beat him to death later.

P.S. told you that this thing was going to get big, quick. The Register reports “All your Web typos are belong to us”, and I quote: “Already a backlash is building, with Net admins being urged to block Verisign’s catch-all domain. This could get very messy.”

Cool Thing Of The Day

Cool And Interesting Thing Of The Day To Do At The University Of Wales, Aberystwyth, #41:

Discover a major security flaw in the university network, that provides any user with half a brain, a computer in their room, some practice, and a lot of patience, the means to get the password of anybody else on your local workgroup, leaving them exposed to malicious attacks, e-mail theft, use of their print quota, and all kinds of other problems. It’s such a serious problem that I’m not going to go into further detail here, in case this e-mail gets into the hands of somebody on the network. Later, discover that this loophole has already been discovered and is abused by at least one third year student. I’ve arranged for John (who aided me in discovering the problem) and I to meet with network services management to inform them of the problem – simply because we feel threatened by it

The ‘cool and interesting things’ were originally published to a location at which my “friends back home” could read them, during the first few months of my time at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, which I started in September 1999. It proved to be particularly popular, and so now it is immortalised through the medium of my weblog.

Tag: security

Reply #13106

Smart Alex

Cool Thing Of The Day