You might have read yesterday that a criminal group “hacked” StubHub to illegally buy tickets to various events. That sounds scary and it is. But what is scary is how the criminals did it. They basically discovered that the accounts that they used to pull off this crime had passwords that were used elsewhere. So the victims used the same password for their StubHub and Facebook accounts for example. Here’s why that’s very bad:
The StubHub incident and arrest is seen by at least one security expert as yet another sign of the trouble with the current usage of passwords. Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of Nok Nok Labs, noted in an email to eWEEK that the fraudulent purchases made on StubHub using stolen usernames and passwords are just the latest example of one of the key problems in online security—password reuse.
“When someone reuses a password across multiple sites, it is only as strong as the weakest link,” Dunkelberger said. “By using the same password to access your local pizza delivery account as you use to access your bank account, or in this case your StubHub account, you can have serious implications for financial or other sensitive data.”
This basically reiterates what I said a couple of weeks ago. You have take your password usage seriously or you could be on the wrong end of one of these “hacks.” If you haven’t already, I would strongly suggest that you re-evaluate your use of passwords for your various online sites and make adjustments quickly. The people arrested in this “hack” won’t be the last ones to use this method to further their criminal aims. Thus you should not want to be caught up in that.
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This entry was posted on July 24, 2014 at 6:47 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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StubHub Hack Shows Why You Need To Take Passwords Seriously
You might have read yesterday that a criminal group “hacked” StubHub to illegally buy tickets to various events. That sounds scary and it is. But what is scary is how the criminals did it. They basically discovered that the accounts that they used to pull off this crime had passwords that were used elsewhere. So the victims used the same password for their StubHub and Facebook accounts for example. Here’s why that’s very bad:
The StubHub incident and arrest is seen by at least one security expert as yet another sign of the trouble with the current usage of passwords. Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of Nok Nok Labs, noted in an email to eWEEK that the fraudulent purchases made on StubHub using stolen usernames and passwords are just the latest example of one of the key problems in online security—password reuse.
“When someone reuses a password across multiple sites, it is only as strong as the weakest link,” Dunkelberger said. “By using the same password to access your local pizza delivery account as you use to access your bank account, or in this case your StubHub account, you can have serious implications for financial or other sensitive data.”
This basically reiterates what I said a couple of weeks ago. You have take your password usage seriously or you could be on the wrong end of one of these “hacks.” If you haven’t already, I would strongly suggest that you re-evaluate your use of passwords for your various online sites and make adjustments quickly. The people arrested in this “hack” won’t be the last ones to use this method to further their criminal aims. Thus you should not want to be caught up in that.
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This entry was posted on July 24, 2014 at 6:47 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.