After Adobe’s passwords database has been hacked, a security expert jokingly created an online crossword puzzle, which the questions and answers are based on the users’ hacked data . What’s the main lesson here? Choose a better password.
It’s hard not to feel the pain of Adobe. Last month it suffered from a loophole in its customers database. Not only that the majority of its software, especially Flash, is considered especially vulnerable by hackers, now its security measurements are also shown naked. Its information security practices have become the object of laughter from both black and white hat experts.
Now, Adobe is to deal with the hacker who decided to mock the company and, indirectly, to its public users, and created a puzzle in which the questions are customers’ security questions (such as ” What is the name of my first dog?” ), and the answers are the stolen passwords.
Even without having the answers, one could easily guess close to 70% of the passwords – which means that the vast majority of users choose very weak passwords.
In parallel, the hacker posted a list of the most popular 100 passwords used by Adobe ‘s customers. Not surprisingly, the most popular password with more than 1.9 million accounts is ‘123456’ . The second password on the list with about 450,000 users is ‘123456789’ . Surprisingly, ‘12345678’ only reached fifth place after ‘password’ and ‘adobe’. Of course you cannot forget the good old ‘QWERTY’ as part of the non-creative passwords.
Whoever uses the services of Adobe it is recommended to reset their password at this link. Remember that a weak password does not protect you, and if you are one of those who say “it will not happen to me”, I wish you that your password does not appear as a definition in the next crossword puzzle.
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