No matter how many times people are warned to set strong secure passwords, many don’t. So why do people take the risk? And is there anything else they can do to be more secure online?
The recent cyber attacks at Penn State have put personal information of 18,000 students in the hands of hackers. What should universities do to protect students’ privacy?
In 2004 Bill Gates pronounced usernames and passwords dead. Gates, a man consistently thinking ahead of the crowd, was right. Most of us – including our employers and the online services we rely on – just…
After various celebrities’ accounts on Apple’s iCloud servers were hacked, the company has made a point of addressing these issues. It has made new claims for the security of iOS 8, the firm’s latest phone…
Recent reports of celebrities having nude or risqué photos of themselves leaked online highlights the serious risk of hackers getting access to our personal pictures. While many of us take inane and uninteresting…
One of the problems with using passwords to prove identity is that passwords that are easy to remember are also easy for an attacker to guess, and vice versa. Nevertheless, passwords are cheap to implement…
Several high-profile security breaches have, of late, got many people wondering about their passwords. It would be great news if I could tell you a perfect sure-fire system to manage your passwords; the…
iPhone users in Australia were greeted with an alarming message this week when they tried to use their devices. They were told that a hacker or group of hackers going by the name Oleg Pliss had taken control…
The latest internet giant to have its security compromised is eBay. A database containing user information has been hacked, leaving potentially millions of people vulnerable. The revelation is clearly…
The web is full of scare stories about the Heartbleed security vulnerability but panicking won’t help. Better to use this situation as an opportunity to clean up our acts. Few of us do it but we should…
If you’re struggling to understand the deluge of information about the Heartbleed vulnerability, you’re not alone. Some reports tell us to change all our online passwords immediately, others warn us that…
It’s as easy as “123456”, or so we’ve learned from Splashdata’s annual worst password of the year list. Slipping down to number two in this most recent list was last year’s favourite, the ever-popular…
Wageeh Boles, Queensland University of Technology and Vinod Chandran, Queensland University of Technology
Technology to acquire and use biometric data such as fingerprints has been around for several decades and has made its way from forensic investigation to laptop computers – and now, with this week’s introduction…
I just did a count of the systems I use that require a password and gave up at 40. I know I’m not alone; for many of us, it often seems we have too many passwords to manage. They are, however, required…