Tag: PASSWORD

Two-factor authentication is a good way to add a strong, additional layer of security to your online accounts. While it's certainly important to use with something like your Google account (which recently added support), a password manager like LastPass is an even better place to batten down the hatches this way. LastPass users who have a premium account should definitely check out Sesame, a ...

Strong, carefully-crafted passwords are imperative nowadays. Google seems to agree, and the company has announced that it is now requiring all Apps for Domains passwords to be a minimum of 8 characters -- two more than the previous limit. How much difference can two measly characters make? Plenty. A quick test with a few different combinations over at How Secure is My Password bumped the ...

Google Chrome password sync has been a long time coming, first taking shape in May 2010 Chromium builds. It's popped up before in official Chrome builds, but never appeared to be functional. Now, however, password sync has come back to the Dev Channel -- and it seems to be working for some. On my own system, Chrome's status indicator spun endlessly and I was never able to authenticate -- forcing ...

1Password -- the popular secure password, note, and wallet app for Mac, iOS, and Windows -- is now available for download from the Zune Marketplace. If you've got a Windows Phone 7 device and have been waiting for a way to tap into your Dropbox-synced 1Password data, now you can! Once you've signed in to your Dropbox account and entered your master password, you'll have access to all your ...

Though the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is growing steadily, the platform is still lacking plenty of marquee apps. You can now cross one off the list, however -- popular password manager LastPass has arrived! Log in to the app, tap a site in your list, and the WP7 browser opens and LastPass logs you in automatically. Right now, LastPass for WP7 is read-only, meaning it can pull down all your ...

It looks like at least one security team has their finger on the pulse: LinkedIn, after hearing about the Gawker Media hack, obtained the database of email addresses and cross-checked it against every member of LinkedIn. If a match was found, the account was immediately deactivated and an email sent to the user, forcing them to change their password. Judging by a thread over at Hacker News, ...

This weekend, Gawker Media had its primary database compromised. In this monstrous breach, not only did 1.5 million users have their privacy breached and email address stolen, but they also had their passwords cracked. In a day and age where the currency of our email address and password -- and thus our identity -- is only superseded by our bank details, it's fair to label the Gawker breach as ...

LastPass has been providing secure, accessible-anywhere storage for your endless collection of Web logins for quite some time. The LastPass bookmarklet works in any modern browser, but it's not quite as functional as the add-ons for Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Now, users of Opera 11 can enjoy the full LastPass experience, too! Head on over to the Opera extensions site and install LastPass ...

Google has update the Chrome Dev channel to 8.0.552.18 on all platforms, and while the focus this time is on polish and bug fixes, one important new feature has arrived. First spotted in the Canary build a few days ago, password sync is now available to Dev channel users and enabled by default. I'm still not certain the sync is actually active, though, as my Canary builds on three machines ...

If you're like me, you may have tried to force Google Chrome's password into action already. It's been possible to add passwords to sync for quite some time via a command line switch, though I found that Chrome would simply spin its wheels once you tried to log in to your account after adding the switch. As of this revision on October 21, password sync was officially enabled by default -- ...

256-bit encryption certainly sounds like it's secure. But depending on how a company implements that encryption, it may not provide quite the level of protection you'd think. That appears to be the case with BlackBerry backup files, if reports from Russian security firm Elcomsoft turn out to be true. Using systems running an Intel Core i7 CPU, they were able to break the 7-character unlock ...

Keeping your online accounts secure is a must, and Google will soon begin rolling out an improved authentication system to its Apps customers. Beginning with Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government users, you'll soon be able to utilize a smartphone-generated verification code as a second layer of account security. It's a bit like the dedicated RSA SecurID fobs some enterprises use for ...

May aunt walt lumen thyme, people. Now you all know my secret! Well, not really, but that's the passphrase that PWGen, a free, open source password generator for Windows, came up with after I tweaked some of its settings. After telling you about Diceware, which lets you generate passphrases from your browser, it's now time to look at a more robust Windows utility that does the same (but ...

Diceware is another tool by Iain Lamb, the maker of Typograph. It answers a simple need by letting users create passphrases with a roll of the dice. You are supposed to roll five physical dice on your desk and enter the result into the text box on the page as one string of digits (say, 14352). The JavaScript tool then searches a list of words that associates each word with a unique number. It ...

A bit of welcome news for Linux users who browse with Google Chrome: a change has landed in the Chromium source code which adds support for the built-in, secure password stores for both GNOME and KDE. Why is this a big deal? Using Chrome's built-in password manager, anyone can click into your options > personal stuff > show saved passwords and view anything you've stored. Call me crazy, ...