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[LUG] Disadvantages of bad password policies and web enabled apps

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8153122.stm

In short:

- Either an employee or Twitter as a policy matter put their financial
  projections etc on google docs. A user with access to these figures
  had a bad password for their web email

- The users personal email was hacked by guessing the password, and
  access obtained to the google docs website

Extract from the BBC article

The hacker has claimed to have wanted to teach people to be more careful
and in a message to the French blog Korben, wrote that his attack could
make internet users "conscious that no one is protected on the net." 
 
"The security breach exploited "an easy-to-guess password and recovery
question, which is one of the simplest ways to make a username and
password combination really insecure," said Phil Wainewright of
ZDNet.com 
 
"Unfortunately, users won't wise up until the cloud providers force them
to." 
 
In a study last year the security firm Sophos found that 40% of internet
users use the same password for every website they access.


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