Thread: Hacking attempts on users' accounts of PTN

original Msg

2011-09-24-Security
Lately we had a lot of hacking attempts on our users' accounts. We don't know who is responsible for hacking just yet, but we can assure you that it is not coming from our site. In order to protect your account use a strong password that consists of letters, numbers and special characters. Please use a different password for each site.
Here at PTN we have advance security options. Go to your Profile -> Security, there you can choose a different login name. This means that you can login with a different username as opposed to the one you are using now.

Some good password reminders for everyone.

Make sure to choose a password consisting of (but not limited to):

• Uppercase Letters (A-Z)
• Lowercase Letters (a-z)
• Special Symbols (!@#$%^&* etc..)
• Numerics (1,2,3...)
• Minimum 8 characters (if allowed) - my rule of thumb, add 4 extra characters to the minimum allowed.
• Frequent changes

Some things to avoid:

• Dictionary words
• Easily guessed passwords (love, sex, secret, god - anyone get the reference?)
• Numbers that mean something to you, such as birthdays etc...
• Pet's names, or names that have a meaning to you
• Using the same password on multiple websites.
• Storing passwords in IE/FF/Chrome
• Anything that can be easily found by knowing basic information about you.

Account security is everyone's responsibility, it only takes one compromised account (then elevated) to dump a DB. Make sure to change your passwords often, and never share it with anyone. If anyone has any questions regarding account security (especially on TI) please PM me and we'll sort it all out :)

You can also use this site to check password strength
Strength Test

You might not want to type your actual passwords you're using in, but you can check what's safe or not. Once you get up to like 80+ bits of entropy, you're pretty damn safe. Beyond 128 and you're crazy safe against brute force attempts.