Security News > 2021 > May > The Wages of Password Re-use: Your Money or Your Life

Mistake number two was the password for his email account was the same as his cybercrime forum admin account.

Regardless of their reasons or lack thereof for choosing poor passwords, it is fascinating that in terms of maintaining one's operational security it actually benefits cybercriminals to use poor passwords in many situations.

Password managers are ideal for people who can't break the habit of re-using passwords, because you only have to remember one master password to access all of your stored credentials.

If you don't trust password managers and have trouble remembering complex passwords, consider relying instead on password length, which is a far more important determiner of whether a given password can be cracked by available tools in any timeframe that might be reasonably useful to an attacker.

Their main limitation is that countless sites still force you to add special characters and place arbitrary limits on password length possibilities.

Finally, there's absolutely nothing wrong with writing down your passwords, provided a) you do not store them in a file on your computer or taped to your laptop, and b) that your password notebook is stored somewhere relatively secure, i.e. not in your purse or car, but something like a locked drawer or safe.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/the-wages-of-password-re-use-your-money-or-your-life/