Social media is exposure for password guessing

The Inquirer security news site is reporting that the 25-year-old arrested by French police for hacking a Twitter data base and accessing U.S. President Barak Obama�s account guessed the admin�s password.

The unemployed man, who went by the handle �Hacker Croll.� is not a genius, the news site concluded.

�Apparently it was a doddle to do. He simply guessed people's passwords by working them out from information on their blogs or online pages they had created about themselves,� it said.

So, if you have a web site with pictures of cat �Fluffy� all over it, and you Tweet about Fluffy until your friends start dropping hints about getting a life, it wouldn�t be unreasonable to think that the password you use on your MySpace page, Twitter account and bank web site is something like �fluffy1.�

Story here.




Not Fluffy


Tom Kelchner