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Friday, September 19, 2008

E-mail hack reveals HUMAN vulnerability

BetaNews | Who needs hackers? Palin e-mail hack reveals obvious vulnerability

There's an old saying among technical consultants: "No matter what they say, it's always a people problem." The cracking of Plain's email account really underscores the problem. The technique supposedly used to gain access to her account was more akin to human hacking. Understanding and exploiting information and techniques commonly used by people to secure their technology. Yahoo will be criticized, although they set up reasonably good security measures and I'm not sure they deserve it. The real fault lies with Sarah Palin. She did what so many of us do, used very easliy guessed public info as security barrirers. Bad, lazy habit.

Always use non-public and seemingly non-sensical information as passwords, usernames, and security confirmation answers. And of course, never, ever say in an email anything you wouldn't want the whole wide world to see. Your candidacy could be in the balance!

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