New study finds 1 out of 3 accounts hacked using weak passwords

cypac1
4 days ago
2 min read

Happy Friday

According to a new study released by the FIDO Alliance, more than a third (36%) of people have had at least one online account compromised due to weak or stolen passwords over the past year.

FIDO is an industry association that promotes technology to help reduce the world's over-reliance on passwords and yes, while they may be biased, they do have a good point. We as human beings are just not that great at making sure our passwords are strong enough and never re-used.

The Takeaway

Enter Passkeys. Passkeys are encrypted credentials tied to your account on a website or application that pairs up with a biometric sensor, such as fingerprint scanner or facial recognition. Passkeys are much harder to phish than passwords as they work only on their registered websites and apps. The logic is that there’s less chance you’ll be tricked into authenticating on a deceptive site because the browser or OS handles the verification process.

Around half (48%) of the world’s top 100 websites have already integrated passkey support and its adoption is growing every day. For a quick, 2-minute video that explains how Passkeys work and why you should start using it, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-go9pFtiGk

Stay safe out there.

-Attila

PS. f you want to hear more about scams and other IT security topics, all for free, check out our Cyber Secured Podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or any other place you listen to podcasts (we're on all of them).

New - the Positivity Box

Tired of hearing about negative, fearful and disturbing cybersecurity news? Me too. You may be surprised to learn that good things happen in IT security. Let's celebrate them!

This week the infamous Lockbit Ransomware gang was hacked again. All of their sites read the message: Don't do crime CRIME IS BAD xoxo from Prague and included a link to a database dump of their internal operations that included passwords, unique bitcoin addresses and targeted companies. We don't know who did the hack, but we thank you for helping to try and take down this Russian based cyber gang.

New Friday Funnies!