Gawker Media’s servers were hacked in December 2010 and the hacker got the login credentials of millions of the company’s users, including over 200,000 decrypted passwords. This forced Gawker to issue a statement asking users to change their passwords on not only their Gawker account but on any other sites they may have used the same password.
In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t a large hack. However, it does highlight something that you may not have thought about: using the same password (or a slight variation thereof) on numerous accounts puts all of your online accounts in jeopardy. Think about what information is kept in your primary mail account and now imagine it in the wrong hands!
This hack provided researchers with the most common passwords used by 188,279 users. We’re hoping you don’t find one of your passwords in the following list - password, 12345, passw0rd, qwerty, lifehacker (the name of the site they were on), trustno1, letmein. Also up there on other lists are (your name), abc123, password1 and wait for it, monkey.
We know it gets increasingly hard to come up with passwords that you can remember so here’s a couple of tips to help create ones that are secure and easy to remember:
- The safest place for your passwords is in your head. Writing it down, and especially storing it on your computer should be avoided
- Have one rule set for generating your own passwords
- Use a combination of letters (including a capital), numbers and symbols
- Use a phrase you’ll remember (favourite song lyric or quote) and select some of the letters from it. Then use a sequence of a capital letter, number and symbol somewhere within the phrase letters e.g. %7H
- Write it down 20 times then get rid of the paper. Hopefully doing this will commit it to memory
- Use a minimum of 8 characters