CDPUG BlogSphere

Here is the presentation file from the March 23, 2013 meeting. Presentation by Tom Suhadolnik, Lead Engineer. enCompass Group LLC.

Top 10 Cyber Threats for Mac Users v1

For backup products, external hard drives were recommended. The Voyager Q is a great product for Creative Professionals with Macs and FireWire. Think FireWire = pipe. USB 2.0 = straw. Spike loves these products and always has a least one in his car.

NewerTech Voyager Q

The latest Macs have USB 3.0 which is equivalent to FireWire. This product would be good for those configurations. It supports 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch SATA drives.

Plugable USB 3.0/2.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station (ASMedia Chipset; UASP and 3TB+ Support)

Overcome password frustrations with “Take Control of Your Passwords”

Do you find juggling Web site usernames and passwords frustrating? I know I do, thanks to having over 300 Web accounts, accumulated over a decade or more. During that time, the recommendations for secure passwords have changed significantly and both the likelihood of problems and the liability of having accounts compromised have increased radically. It’s maddening, and, honestly, a bit scary, especially after the high-profile hacking of Wired writer Mat Honan last year, coupled with password thefts from the likes of Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook.

Luckily, Joe Kissell is on the case, and his latest ebook, the 88-page “Take Control of Your Passwords,” calmly offers a secure, reliable strategy that you can apply with a minimum of fuss. I’ll explain more about the kinds of problems Joe’s approach solves in a bit, but I strongly recommend you watch Joe’s short intro video on the book’s page linked below – it’s a lot of fun, as is the “Joe of Tech” comic we commissioned from our friends Snaggy and Nitrozac at the Joy of Tech, also on that page. The book normally costs $10, but the 30% MUG discount drops that to $7; it’s all encoded in the link below.

http://tid.bl.it/tco-passwords-mug-discount

“Take Control of Your Passwords” helps you overcome frustrations that arise when dealing with the following password problems:

* 9-character passwords with upper- and lowercase letters, digits, and punctuation are NOT strong enough.

* You CANNOT turn a so-so password into a great one by tacking a punctuation character and number on the end.

* It is NOT safe to use the same password everywhere, even if it’s a great password.

* A password is NOT immune to automated cracking because there’s a delay between login attempts.

* Even if you’re an ordinary person without valuable data, your account may STILL be hacked, causing you problems.

* You can NOT manually devise “random” passwords that will defeat all potential attackers.

* Just because a password doesn’t appear in a dictionary, that does NOT necessarily mean that it’s adequate.

* It is NOT a smart idea to change your passwords every month.

* Truthfully answering security questions like “What is your mother’s maiden name?” does NOT keep your data more secure.

* Adding a character to a 10-character password does NOT make it 10 percent stronger.

* Easy-to-remember passwords like “correct horse battery staple” will NOT solve all your password problems.

* All password managers are NOT pretty much the same.

* Your passwords will NOT be safest if you never write them down and keep them only in your head.

Author and database developer William Porter said, “Joe handles a confusing and scary subject more clearly and calmly than I would have thought possible. I’ll be recommending this book to just about everybody I know.” And Securosis CEO Rich Mogull, although he’s also a TidBITS friend, said this after our collaborative feedback pass on the book: “Awesome. You did an amazing job breaking it down. This should be mandatory reading.”

http://tid.bl.it/tco-passwords-mug-discount

As you might have guessed from Joe’s video short and the Joe of Tech comic, we’re trying to have more fun telling the world about our ebooks this year, and another step in that direction is to reprise something we did with the initial release of our first title, Joe’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Panther” back in 2003: if you find this ebook helpful, we encourage you to write to us about your experiences – for example, how you overcame bad password habits or solved a challenging password problem. (If you want to include a photo of yourself, perhaps with an “uncle” you’ve helped out with advice from the book, feel free!)

We’ll post the most interesting and creative responses on our Web site, and once a month (for the first three months after publication) Joe will pick his favorite story and send the lucky reader a batch of his famous homemade chocolate chip cookies. Photos and testimonials about the cookies are also welcome, of course!

As always, thank you for your support of the Take Control series!

cheers… -Adam & Tonya Engst, Take Control publishers

Be even smarter, add password security to it

If you haven’t set up a password on your Android, Blackberry, iPhone, or iPad, you may want to pay attention,

First, you will be glad you did if you are ever unfortunate to lose it, have it stolen, or fall into the wrong hands.

Second, you’d be surprised how valuable the information on your phone could be to other people.

After all, it has your customer contact information, family member addresses, embedded passwords to your primary email accounts, and even access to online services such as banking and credit cards.

There are somethings you can do

Lock the phone with a password and choose a password that is longer than four digits. Don’t use the same PIN number as the one for your debit card.

Turn on GPS which will allow the phone to be tracked if it is stolen, but don’t try to recover the phone yourself. Call the police and your wireless provider for assistance.

In the worst case, your wireless provider can disable a phone to prevent a thief from,racking up hundreds of minutes of expensive international calls

Here’s a video and instructions on how to set passwords for your phone.  The article also has some pointers to some handy apps to help you manage security on your phone.

Posted by: blog@cdpug.org

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Posted by Wkiraly at 1/26/2010 3:09 PM

The top ten most common passwords, according to this article are:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou *
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123* Note: this list was sourced from the RockYou website.
See