Further to my column about fingerprint biometric scanners (subscription only ), I’ve heard from a company working on a different kind of biometric security: Via the bone. Last week, Mass.-based RSA Security Inc. (the guys who make the SecurID number tag, called ‘a two-factor user authentication system’ in the jargon) announced a joint research collaboration with… Read More »
More on Alastair Rumpell’s response to my privacy concerns about his new email monitoring service, didtheyreadit. (Here’s the first one.) I wondered how the email addresses harvested by Rampell would be used (These would include all emails sent from and to recipients via the service since as far as I can understand it didtheyreadit, unlike… Read More »
Forget phishing for your passwords via dodgy emails. Just use Wi-Fi. Internet security company Secure Computing Corporation have today released a report prepared by security consultants Canola/Jones Internet Investigations which “documents the serious risks of password theft that business travelers encounter when using the Internet in hotels, cafes, airports, and trade show kiosks.” The full… Read More »
As if you didn’t know it already, (and I’ve posted about this before) your Windows passwords are not safe. According to an article on TechExtreme, some Swiss researchers have published a paper detailing how to crack Windows computers protected by alphanumeric passwords in an average of 13.6 seconds. Their approach can crack 99.9 percent… Read More »
Now your Microsoft Windows password can be cracked in 13.6 seconds, a vast improvement over the slow and tedious 101 seconds it took previously. An improved cryptanalytic method uses large amounts of memory–in this case, 1.4 GB–to speed its cracking of keys, says Security Wire Digest. I won’t bore you with how they did it.… Read More »