The bad words of Computer Security Part 1- Passwords
So there is this thing out there that computers are the Root of all evil. Now that is actually a very geeky joke that no one should ever get, but there are some out there I can hear laughing as you pet your Playstation 3. So what is Computer Security? What does it have to do with the average user? A LOT!!!!
Today everything is on our computer. Well almost everything, we still can’t get pizza from the computer. We could order it online but what’s the fun of that. Since we work, bank, communicate and play on our computer there is a lot of information and information is as valuables as gold. This first section is concentrating on PASSWORDS. You know that little word you need to gain entrance into a private little space usually in Cyberia. Now this little guy can be used against you, can be your worst nightmare.
Password Account Levels
Multiple passwords are the issue. I have at least 20 things that are Password Protected, and there is no way I’m going to remember 20 different passwords but if i loose one password then All my information can get accessed!!! So when choosing what password to use I have come up with three levels of passwords:
- Free for all - Any site that is free and not very important if someone get’s my username or password. Like Nytimes.com. I have to register to read the newspaper but that’s it! They don’t have any other information, and if someone, some how (discussed later) gets my password it’s okay. Not too much harm done, like someone stealing your wallet but you only had your friends business cards in it. The passwords in this category can be the same.
- Personal - This is your email, blog accounts and anything you keep personal items. These passwords should be different then your “Free for all” passwords but within the category can be the same password. You wouldn’t use this on too many sites though.
- Confidential – This is the motherload for your identity. Your online banking, personal information or anything that could directly damage you. Each one in this category should be different. There shouldn’t be too many but this can easily be done by a short prefix or suffix on a secure password.
So now your saying to yourself, how am I going to remember all those passwords. Stop. Were not there yet, because most passwords are too easy to remember that there also very easy for someone to find out with a simple program. So the above list divides the passwords into category levels, this next session is about creating a secure ROOT password. A root password is a simple base password that can be added to.
Root password
Let’s start with a name, I’ll pick a girls name. Elizabeth. That is a very week password for three main reasons:
- It’s found in a dictionary. Primarily English dictionaries are used to get passwords, but other language dictionaries maybe used as well.
- No Numbers.
- No Special Characters like ! _ – ?
Now just adding numbers to the end or the characters to the end helps a lot, but isn’t always the best. So if you wanted to quickly make this a secure password then Elizabeth-1981 would be better. Now if Elizabeth was born or something else had happened in that year that is related to her then you would easily remember this password. But that wouldn’t be a root password. To make a root we have to make it solid. Now here is an easy way to do this by creating your own code.
- You can replace letters that look like numbers: an E to a 3; an I or L to 1; a O to a 0. These are easy to remember as long as you always do those replacements.
- Special characters with letters like ! with a L or I. A $ with an S. or a ? with a vowel.
- You can also do sound or make up your own code. an A to 8. a 2 with a T.
- Capital letters also help and you can capitalize all constants or vowels.
With the above in mind the following passwords would be a root password for Elizabeth:
- 3l1zab3th
- 3l?z?b3th
- El?z?b3th (Strongest password has capitals, special characters and numbers)
- El!z8beth (Strongest password has capitals, special characters and numbers)
Are these easy for you to remember? That is the important thing and you might want to just think about something that is strong with the above rules that you can easily use for your ROOT Password.
Level Password
Now that you have your root you can expand it to create a level password. Were going to use the last one, El!z8beth. This password is hard to crack and could be used for your “Free for all” level accounts. Then for your “Personal” Accounts you could add a number to the end. It’s not good to add just a one or two because there usually isn’t any relationship unless you put a number two because she’s the second child.
Now for your most secure passwords you have to relate them to the site your accessing and since the password is already secure you could just add a prefix to this password but I believe you want a new root account just for the “confidential accounts”. You can use the same root for all confidential but just add a number, letter and/or a dash. So if we take the name Steve and make it $T3v3 we have a short secure password and now we are going to make that usable for our American Express account and the password could be ae-$T3v3. Since we remember that we use this root password for all our main secure accounts and the initials of the company in the beginning, we could remember this password for a very long time and yet it still will be secure. This root password then could be used for our work also as w-$T3v3. If someone did quickly see some of these passwords they may not understand what it is.
The Final Push
As you can see it takes a little time to create a secure password but once it’s done the root can be used for a while and you can change prefix and suffix with letters or numbers for a while. I find four digit years easy to remember. The main importance is to find an easy to remember password with a secure backbone.
Other Methods
Passphrase – Another way is a passphrase. That is using a sentence or phrase as a password. So the phrase: I am a die hard jets fan would be iaadhjf which would be hard to crack, but with these phrases it’s usually hard to add numbers and speacil characters unless you add a year iaadhjf-89 or a favorite players numbers. This way maybe easier for your to create a password and can be used with the Password Account Levels that I stated above.
Problems with these passwords
One major issue with these passwords is that some sites do not allow some special characters. You might want one of your roots to not have a special character and you add it on with a – when needed.
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