Thursday

Creating secure passwords

Creating secure passwords that would not be easily detected, and still be able for you to remember is a difficult task. I try to give some tips on making secure and yet memorable passwords. For that, first you have to create an algorithm (a pattern) of your own. Then you use that pattern to create a password for yourself. I will tell you how to create a simple algorithm(a pattern).

Let us suppose we need to change our passwords once a month. Then we can choose to use the names of each month in the passwords.
For example we use "september" as our password.
But how to make it secure?
For that you can mix it with some numbers. Make your unique choice of numbers , for mixing in the name. Say for example 1,2,3
Now we have a name, and some numbers.
Now there is one more thing we can do to make it strong is to mix capital and small letters.

So here are some possible combinations for a password.

sEp1tEm2bEr3 (see, this password contains september, and 123)
Sept123embeR
sepTEMber123

If you look closely each password has a definit cyclic pattern. So all that you need to remember is the pattern of your choice and the name and numbers you mixed in it. So you need not remember the whole password.

Now as you can see, this password is pretty strong and you should still be able to remember it easily. You can create a lot of passwords by using the combinations of the names you easily remember, and the numbers you choose. You can choose a single pattern of your choice for all your passwords and create different passwords using a combination of different names and numbers.

These are the simpler passwords. You can get help of an automatic password generating program to help you to create longer and more secure passwords (but difficult to memorize)

SourceForge has one such program called PW Gen which is distributed under GPL general public license. You can download and use if freely. It helps you to create 32bits to 2048 bits long passwords. It means 6 characters long to 342 characters long password which includes A-Z, a-z,0-9, and all special characters like /?-+ etc
Create passwords as complex according to your needs.
Link To PW Gen
Link T0 SourceForge

Safe Browsing Tips

The most dreaded threat to your computer is being take over by hackers, who use your computer without your knowledge to attack and harm other computers while your computer is connected to internet. FBI reports that there are above 1 million home computers in US alone which are being used remotely by the hackers called Bot-herders, without the consent or express knowledge of the owners of those computers.
You can take a small precautionary measure to protect yourself while Online by using a Limited Account on windowsXP. If you are using XP, and if you are the only user, or if you are the main user then probably your account is an Administrative Account. To check what type of account you have, Go to Control Panel > User Accounts > (Look at the Icon of Your Account) , it is either Computer Administrator, or Limited Account.
If you use an Administrative Account which is the default account type then you have the privilage of Installing new programs. But Unfortunately this Privilage becomes your weakness/drawback while you are using internet. When you are browsing different sites, some malware can creep in as temperory Internet files and remain there waiting for a chance to be executed. Once it is executed, normally when you boot your computer again, it spreads in your computer by making new entries in registry, copying its DLL files and executables in different locations on the hard disk and modifying your default home page.
These entries are preserved by windows system restore therefore whenever you have a Trojan or a Worm you have to disable system restore temperorily to remove its traces.
If you are using a limited account, then the infection will be contained to the user account only, and will not affect the whole computer.
It is a good practice to delete all computer generated files, temporary internet files, cookies etc at the end of your online session at least at the end of the day or before you shut your computer. This way you remove any lurking malware in it.
If you already have a Limited User Account then just Log In and use it while you are accessing internet. Otherwise create a new one.
Start > Control Panel (Switch to classic View) > User Accounts > Create a new Account > Type a name for the new account -Next > Pick an account Type (Limited) > Create Account
Once the account is created, it should appear in the User Accounts window, with Limited Account written under it. Use this Account for accessing internet from now on.
You can switch between your Administrative and User Account easily without having to Log Off one account. Click on Log Off > Switch User and Choose the account to Log In. This can be handy if you need to access your Administrative account for installing softwares, or for any other reason. But remember your Clipboard does not work in between switching the accounts. It means you can not copy something in the clipboard in one account and then paste it in another account. For that you can copy the files in the Shared Folder. This is the location of shared folder on your hard disk.
Click on Start > My Computer > doubleClick Shared Documents.
This is the common place where you can copy any files, or documents that you want to access from both accounts.
You will need to do some house-keeping before you can start using your Limited Account.
Some of the programs that you have installed in Administrative Account may not seem to appear in the programs menu of the Limited Account, and some those appear may not seem to open at all.
If you see that a program that you had installed is not appearing in the menu, Click on Start > My Computer and doubleClick on the disk icon, C,D, etc to browse to the location the program was installed. For Example Ccleaner does not appear in my Limited Account. So I doubleClick on C > Program Files > CCleaner

Once you are in the folder of the program, doubleClick on the Icon of the program to see if the program opens executes runs. If it opens then close that program for the time being. Then Click on the Icon again to select it, right click on it and select Send To > Desktop (create shortcut) from the menu. It will create a shortcut on you Limited Account desktop, from where you will be able to access the program.

What about the programs that are not working ?

You can install new program (probably) while in the Limited Account. Try to run a installation file , if it runs then create a new folder for it. Otherwise it would overwrite the installation that you had done form the Administrative Account. I had to install Privoxy, because it would not run on my Limited Account. So I had to download it from the site and run the setup program. I created a new folder called Privoxy2 and installed the program in that folder.

I had to configure my browsers, both IE7 and Firefox to use the proxy server at 127.0.0.1 on port 8118. Privoxy really makes your Browsing Transparent. You can view each file as it is being rquested, you can immediately block any file by editing the default page of privoxy. You will be surprised to see how many files get downloaded just for advertising purposes. Privoxy blocks them all

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