Computer System and Tutorial

Changing Passwords is sheer wasting of time, claim some people, hitting at the conventional method of internet security.  We have known that cryptic strong passwords provide personal internet security. But this conviction may be now outdated and even counter productive, exposing us to more and more risks than other users.

How Strong Should A Password Be, For Internet Security?

It is common to find that users are advised to change their passwords into strong ones, ensuring that they contain more than six characters and a mix of characters which never resemble simple words. This strength of password is based on the hunch that such passwords cannot be guessed by hackers. Times have changed and so have methods which criminals deploy.

Phishing Attacks And Internet Security.

Internet Security in present day scenario has attained a new dimension, even as hackers never need to go on guessing at possible passwords, because it is easy to steal them. Take phishing attacks, for instance. A recent study pointed out that most of the spams  that we flood our inboxes, are after all attempts to phish your email account, by which a decoy lures you to visit their site imitating it to be one you trust, like your bank, or Paypal, etc.

When you unsuspectingly log on to them and provide your personal credentials, you have just handed over your personal internal security to the criminals hands, and they will hand over the password to hackers.  In such a scenario it doesn’t matter whether you have strong password or weak one, when they have alternative and speedier methods to hack your accounts.

Keyloggers Are A Danger To Internet Security.

Worse than the phishing criminals, you have in the cyberspace, keyloggers which result in infecting your PC through malware installations.  A huge number of keylogger programs are on the web space, which are able to record all the user’s keystrokes, which might have been installed without your knowledge in your system, which then sends the information to servers of the hackers for analysis and finding out passwords and logins. What difference can a password whether strong or weak can make in this scenario is anybody’s guess.

Dictionary Attacks Against Internet Security.

There are some brute force attacks known as dictionary attacks, when the hacker instead of trying to guess your password,  he/she uses a software which uses millions of combination and permutations of words and numbers and the intruder can hit upon the right word and get access to your account jeopardizing your internet security.

A strong password may only delay the software to provide the correct combination of characters but is never 100% safe.  Let us agree that computers can run over these networks trying their brute force, and no strongest password can counter these attacks. Your internet security is always at risk.

Obviously Internet Security does not depend solely on strong passwords these days, the only way you can circumvent these attacks, to ensure that you do not visit sites which are suspects, do not open email messages from unknown or strange persons, delete all messages which have attachments of dubious natures, especially unsolicited ones.