Password-related news

May 12th, 2009 by Vladimir Katalov
Category: «Passwords & Human Factor», «Security», «Software»

There is a few, so I’ll put ’em all into a single blog post 🙂

First, Phoenix Technologies announced a program (for Windows XP/Vista) to link mobile phones with computer. But no, this is not about data transfer between the phone and PC. Indeed, this is a security system: walk away from your computer, and it will lock automatically; when the user returns, the program will automatically unlock the system. Of course, using Bluetooth (what else? :)). More details on Phoenix Freeze web site.

Second, Researchers take over botnet, grab 56,000 passwords an hour. Actually, this is not a very fresh idea (to steal the passwords using the malware). More important: the researchers found that most users reused passwords for multiple sites. I can guess that there are even some users who have the same passwords for accessing web sites (from pet lovers forum to online banking) and critical business data. So instead of breaking your PGP Disk container (which is really secury, even with our GPU acceleration), someone can just get the password saved by your browser. You’re warned.

And finally, just a funny story: Creative passwords only useful if you can remember them. Btw, how many cats do you have? 😉