Cognitive Bias ‘Gives Clues That Help Password Hackers’

Facebook.com/storetec

Storetec Services Limited

@StoretecHull www.storetec.net

Hackers can gain access to sensitive data by using clues about a user to unpick their passwords, an expert has said.

Security researcher Per Thorsheim told the BBC the bulk of passwords are vulnerable because people tend to choose them according to data relating to them, such as children's names, dates of birth and house numbers.

Indeed, the most common failing occurs when people pick a pin number, leading to 80 per cent of people using just 100 of the 10,000 possible numbers.

Demographics also make a difference, with women tending to go for longer passwords and men emphasising diversity. Other influences include the colours used in the logos of websites; the most commonly used hue in passwords is blue, which features in the liveries of Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Another researcher, Bruce Marshall, noted that cybercriminals can often exploit a tendency of people to use the same password for different sites by hacking one and then using this to gain entry to others.

"If a criminal is cracking passwords then most likely they gathered them from a specific site and are trying to gain access to additional accounts," he noted.

All this suggests that the best way to keep passwords safe is to use fairly obscure ones with little connection to the user.

For businesses, the loss of a password may be particularly dangerous, not least as some people may use the same means of gaining access to work accounts as they do for personal ones.

However, one way to help the situation could be to use data encryption and remote storage to keep the cyber criminals at bay.

That would mean any cybercriminals who do get past the password would be faced with information they would not be able to unscramble.

Shortcomings of data security are not just a challenge for small firms, as a recent government survey of FTSE 350 firms found just 39 per cent of them have used the government's ten-step cyber security guidance to help keep data safe.

Storetec News/Blogs."http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/cognitive-bias-

gives-clues-that-help-password-hackers/". Cognitive Bias ‘Gives Clues That Help Password Hackers’. December 2, 2013. Storetec.