Weak or leaked passwords put accounts at particular risk when they are reused. This article explains the idea behind myh4ckz.com, our experience with password security and what to do when a warning appears.
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A simple and useful tool to spot weak passwords.
Turning helplessness into power
I still remember the feeling of helplessness I felt when my personal information and money was stolen in a data breach. It had happened with my bank a few years ago due to a leak at HomeDepot. As a matter of fact it wasn’t caused by anything too negligent I did or did not do, except that I went shopping at HomeDepot, paid with my credit card and put in my email address for the receipt. But yet, I was there, helpless and I never wanted to feel that way again. That’s why all I could do was watch as my hard-earned savings were drained from my account. Thankfully, I was able to get my money back. However, the sense of violation and betrayal is hard to shake. Evidently it has made me even more cautious about how I handle my personal information online despite my background in IT.
Overcoming Insecurities
For this purpose we created myh4ckz.com. We wanted to help people protect their online information and give them peace of mind. Knowing that our new website can help people stay safe online is something that means a lot to us.
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EXPERIENCES AS AN IT CONSULTANT
TALKING TO ONE BRICK AT A TIME
In our work as security consultants we are regularly contracted by other companies to help them secure their systems. Part of the very low level tasks is to set up new employee accounts and train them on password security and how to spot weak passwords. However, on every job either employees or sometimes even traditional system administrators approach us and ask if they could just use the same password for everything. “It’s too hard to keep track of all of them”, they’ll say. Or, “I know it’s not secure, but I’ll never remember all of those different passwords”.
DANGERS OF REUSING PASSWORDS
Notwithstanding their requests we try to explain to them time and time again that using the same password for everything is a security risk. It is important to realize that if one account is compromised, all of the accounts are be compromised. But it sometimes feels like talking to a brick wall. Hence passwords are traded on the dark web and used every day against people on the regular internet. As a result we thought: why not give the people on the public internet a tool to fight the dark side? That’s why we launched myh4ckz.com to help overcome insecure passwords and we decided to make it available for the general public. So today you can check and see yourself if a password is traded on the internet. Additional security features are available via our Dark Web Scans.
MYH4CKZ.COM
Overcoming insecure passwords
What is an insecure password today?
Imagine your house is your password-protected precious data. You would never leave your front door unlocked and unguarded, so why would you leave your precious data unprotected?
Similarly your password is like the key to your house. You wouldn’t want just anyone to have a copy of your house key, would you? In conclusion, you also don’t want just anyone to know your password and you need to spot weak passwords. If someone knows your password, they can pretend to be you and do things that you might not want them to do.
How insecure passwords make you an easy target
An insecure password is a password that is easy to crack. Using an insecure password is risky because it can be easily guessed by someone who is trying to gain access to your account without being authorized to do so. This can particularly be done by using a brute force dictionary attack, where the attacker tries to guess the password by every possible combination of characters or entering words from a dictionary or a dark web leak collection. Hence using an insecure password is risky because it can lead to your account being compromised, often for long times without you knowing.
Strong Passwords at the age of the Dark Web
On the other hand a strong password is one that is difficult to guess and contains a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and cannot be found on the dark web. However, no matter how complex your password is, if a hacker guesses it or even knows it from the dark web, they could gain access to your personal information, including your financial information. They could subsequently use your account to send spam or phishing emails to your contacts. Therefore a secure password helps protect you from these risks straightaway, increases your security and offers you an invaluable peace of mind.
As we have pointed out above, passwords are the keys to the kingdom. Thus more and more people follow the advice of staying away from easy to crack passwords, but they are unaware that even more sophisticated passwords are traded by criminals on the dark web.
SPOT WEAK PASSWORDS WITH MYH4CKZ.COM
Our tool myh4ckz.com offers a solution to a problem many people are just starting to realize it exists. It tells you if a password you’d like to use has been traded on the dark web and helps you spot weak passwords, no matter how complex the password is. It’s just one piece of a large puzzle though. So what else can you do to protect yourself? We recommend using a strong, unique password for each online account. And if you’re worried about forgetting them all, consider using our zero knowledge password manager to keep track of them for you. Further on we strongly recommend to use two factor authentication whereever possible.
STAY SAFE
ONE MORE THING…
If you have been compromised, resetting your passwords is never enough. If someone tells you otherwise, stay away from that person when it comes to security.
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Use password checks safely
A checking tool should never require a complete personal password to be uploaded. Prefer local or k-anonymity methods when available, and treat every match as a reason to change the password at the real service.
- Generate a unique password for every account with a trusted password manager.
- Enable multifactor authentication and revoke old sessions.
- After a breach notice, check reused variants and the email account as well.
The availability and operation of myh4ckz.com may have changed since publication.
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