Minor-League hacking in the MLB

So, about a year ago, the Houston Astros announced their internal player database had been breached. This week, more details emerged, pointing right at the St. Louis Cardinals.

It wasn’t a terribly sophisticated attack. You knew I’d write about this, but I’ll explore it from an IT security perspective more than from a baseball perspective.

Read more

Although it’s counterintuitive, AT&T’s new password policy makes sense

AT&T has a new password policy that forbids the use of certain common words in passwords, including some words of a colorful nature.

Yes, it reduces the number of possible passwords, but that isn’t exactly a bad thing.

Read more

The ethics of writing nefarious security instructions

This week I posted a link to a video showing how to crack a WPS-enabled wifi network, and this week, Ars Technica wrote a firsthand account of cracking a password list. I’m sure this raises questions of ethics in some people’s minds. To be honest, spreading this kind of information makes me a little uncomfortable too, but I also think it’s necessary.

Read more

Ways to keep your password from being guessed–today

Articles like Ars Technica’s Why passwords have never been weaker — and crackers have never been stronger are getting more and more common these days.

In a positive development, I don’t think the story had been live more than an hour or two before people started asking me questions. That’s good, because that tells me that people care.
Read more