change your password. again.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009 8:41 am by noelposted in tech | tags: passphrase, password, security, webmail
the passphrase is in cebuano. 
wait. does the account even exist?
it seems that hacking passwords for webmail services is getting some attention. and money. people are actually paying someone to get people’s webmail passwords so they can take a peek at people’s private e-mails.
naughty. santa does not like that.
there is a trend here. people get paid to hack into a webmail account–not to mess it up–but to take a look at what the account contains. they don’t even change anything–not even the password–so the user is unaware that his/her account has been compromised. on one occasion, i got my hands on a compromised e-mail account and all the hacker did was to add another e-mail account, supposedly so that they can send spam using the original e-mail address.
what to do. like i said before, use a passphrase instead of a password. a phrase is longer than a word and is therefore harder and take longer to crack. it would be better not to use any english words or phrases if you can. french. german. tagalog. japanese. whatever. as long as you can remember them. but not english.
change your password. now.
18 January 2010 8:56 pm at 8:56 pm
18Jan2010 (UTC +8)
I also recommend the use of passphrases. Not only are they harder to crack (using brute-foce methods), it’s also harder to follow what the “victim” is typing on the keyboard when the attacker is “shoulder-surfing.” But best reason of all, is that passphrases are easier to remember and thus less likely to be written down somewhere (that an attacker can discover).
To illustrate, let’s say you are making up a new password, using the first letter of every sentence from “For better, for poorer, I will love my wife.” then that hard-to-crack password will be:
“FbfpIwlmw”
But if got that sentence above as your passphrase, it will be harder to crack but easier to remember:
“Forbetter,forpoorer,Iwilllovemywife.”
Take note of the “,” and “.” characters. It can even be further improved by changing some letters into numbers:
“Forbetter,forp00rer,Iwi11lovemywif3.”
Hope this helps!