Hacked or to be Hacked

Nicole Perlroth:

Chances are, most people will get hacked at some point in their lifetime. The best they can do is delay the inevitable by avoiding suspicious links, even from friends, and manage their passwords. Unfortunately, good password hygiene is like flossing — you know it’s important, but it takes effort. How do you possibly come up with different, hard-to-crack passwords for every single news, social network, e-commerce, banking, corporate and e-mail account and still remember them all?

To answer that question, I called two of the most (justifiably) paranoid people I know, Jeremiah Grossman and Paul Kocher, to find out how they keep their information safe. Mr. Grossman was the first hacker to demonstrate how easily somebody can break into a computer’s webcam and microphone through a Web browser. He is now chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security, an Internet and network security firm, where he is frequently targeted by cybercriminals. Mr. Kocher, a well-known cryptographer, gained notice for clever hacks on security systems. He now runs Cryptography Research, a security firm that specializes in keeping systems hacker-resistant. Here were their tips:

FORGET THE DICTIONARY

NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORD TWICE

COME UP WITH A PASSPHRASE

OR JUST JAM ON YOUR KEYBOARD

STORE YOUR PASSWORDS SECURELY

A PASSWORD MANAGER? MAYBE

IGNORE SECURITY QUESTIONS

USE DIFFERENT BROWSERS

SHARE CAUTIOUSLY

“At some point, you will get hacked — it’s only a matter of time,” warned Mr. Grossman. “If that’s unacceptable to you, don’t put it online.”