Password Question

[Pwndenburg]

Hi, Right now I'm using the same password for my microsoft windows as I am for my primary e-mail. I realize that this particular password is literally the keys to the kingdom. I'm only using it for windows and e-mail. Bottom line, should I change one or the other or is the risk acceptable?

 

[lxskllr]

Generally it's bad policy to reuse passwords, but in this particular case, the risk is minimal depending on specific circumstances of course. That said, it's not a bad idea to change passwords every so often, and now's as good a time as any. Use a password manager, and you can make it harder to crack, especially the mail password.

 

[nickbits]

I do the same thing. Actually I think my gmail is different now--I added a $ to the end

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, using the same password for multiple sites is REALLY a bad idea now. It doesn't seem that many sites out there know how to properly encrypt them, so the hackers often end up cracking the entire password list for the site.

That said, this new mass password cracking issue doesn't give much credence to the "always use a tough password that's hard to crack" creedo.

What's the point of using a crazy 20 character multicase password with special characters for every site you use if the site storing the password isn't going to encrypt it properly? It's just going to cracked anyway.

If you can't trust the dumbasses running some of the sites you visit not do to something REALLY dumb like store it in cleartext, you might as well just use "password" or "qwerty12" as your password and be done with it. By entering GOOD passwords at poorly run sites like that, you're just giving the hackers more material to add to their brute force password lists.