{"id":583,"date":"2013-11-22T13:25:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T20:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2019-09-27T11:17:05","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:17:05","slug":"password-hygiene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/articles\/password-hygiene\/","title":{"rendered":"Password Hygiene"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Github recently discovered a <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/blog\/1698-weak-passwords-brute-forced\">distributed brute force password cracking effort<\/a>. Short version, scammers used a network of 40,000 IP addresses and slow, methodical retries to get around lockout restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>Good news: Github emailed users who were compromised, including some that they could not confirm but suspected were compromised. If you didn&#8217;t receive that email, you&#8217;re probably ok.<\/p>\n<p>Bad news: They probably tried logging into your account anyway. Check your <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/settings\/security\">Github Security<\/a>\u00a0page for failed logins (look for user.failed_login). I found one from Indonesia from 3 days ago. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maxmind.com\/en\/geoip_demo\">GeoIP lookup tool<\/a>\u00a0will give you a botnet world tour.<\/p>\n<p>This is as good a time to repeat password hygiene advice:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do not reuse passwords across different sites<\/li>\n<li>Use strong passwords (12-16+ characters, include symbols and alphanumerics)<\/li>\n<li>Use a password manager so you don&#8217;t have to remember or write down strong passwords.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pwsafe.org\/\">PwSafe<\/a> is cross-platform, <a href=\"https:\/\/agilebits.com\/onepassword\">1Password<\/a> works well for the Apple ecosystem. There are others, but make sure to use one!<\/li>\n<li>Use 2 factor authentication for important accounts. I have it for <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/accounts\/answer\/180744?hl=en\">Google<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/help\/363\">Dropbox<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/settings\/two_factor_authentication\/configure\">Github<\/a>. The <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/accounts\/answer\/1066447?hl=en\">Google Authenticator<\/a> app (iOS+Android) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.authy.com\/\">Authy<\/a> both work well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=6766031\">Hacker News<\/a> has a good discussion that covers more angles on this attack and security in general. Here&#8217;s an article about <a href=\"https:\/\/pixelprivacy.com\/resources\/reusing-passwords\/\">why you should not reuse passwords<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Stay safe!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Github recently discovered a distributed brute force password cracking effort. Short version, scammers used a network of 40,000 IP addresses and slow, methodical retries to get around lockout restrictions. Good news: Github emailed users who were compromised, including some that they could not confirm but suspected were compromised. If you didn&#8217;t receive that email, you&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-programming","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pazgP-9p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pchristensen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}