For my first blog post of 2012, I was going to focus on New Year's resolutions that every network administrator should consider. This was to include things like making sure you have a map of your network and having a log of what users are doing on your network. However, as I put my list together, I realized the most important one on it was that we all need to review how we use passwords both personally and at work.
Recent analysis of the Stratfor password list shows that people are continuing to use very weak passwords. It also shows that complex passwords are being cracked in less and less time with easy-to-use tools. Over on the Security Is Sexy blog, Darlene Storm also has an interesting post on this topic which looks at how brute force tools can also be used to crack Wi-Fi security.
Password theft is becoming more and more of a problem. It is estimated that the Ramnit worm, which first appeared in April 2010, has captured at least 45,000 Facebook logins and passwords. It operates by infecting Windows executables, Microsoft Office and HTML files. Once on a system it will attempt to gather user names, passwords and browser cookies.
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