“Your Password Has Been Hacked” – The Password Crisis
An original speech by Geoff Peters geoffmobile.com given to Vancouver Toastmasters Club 59 in February 2014.
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Also, feel free to visit our Toastmasters Club website at tmclub59.com for more information about Toastmasters in Vancouver Canada.
Note: This speech is project #5 in the Toastmasters Public Relations advanced manual, the Crisis Management Speech.
Useful links mentioned in my speech:
Keepass password manager: keepass.info/
Lastpass password manager: lastpass.com/
Statistics on password security:
Article cited: “55% of net users use the same password for most, if not all, websites. When will they learn?”
nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/23/users-same-password-most-websites/
Special thanks to Toastmasters toastmasters.org for being an excellent public speaking club which I have greatly benefited from.
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Speech synopsis:
Intro:
How many of you in the audience use passwords for the computer accounts?
How many of you have ever been the victim of password guessing or hacking on the computer?
55% of net users use the same password for most if not all websites in 2013.
26% said they tend to use easy to remember passwords such as birthdays or people’s names.
I think this is a crisis, something that we all need to be concerned about, because the stakes are high.
What is the Problem
If someone guesses your password, they can steal your online identity, steal your financial information, get access to your email, commit fraud or illegal acts, take advantage of your friends, or send viruses or spam to others.
I heard about a scam where someone’s email was hacked, and the scammer sent emails to the person’s close friends, asking them to send money to them because they were apparently stuck in a foreign company, thus scamming the person’s friends out of thousands of dollars.
If someone can hack your website password, they can take over your web server and use it to distribute malware, viruses, spam, or dangerous adware.
Tell story about my web server, getting hacked. Bots are making hundreds of attempts to guess my passwords to break into my server.
Choosing a good password
A telecom company allows logging into their website using a 4 digit number password. So easy to guess.
If it’s easy to remember, it is easy to guess for a computer to hack your password.
The longer the password, the better. Don’t use any dictionary words.
Using dictionary words is a problem, because the passwords are way easier to guess.
The solution: Use a password manager
The solution is to use a password manager, like Keepass. It is software that will generate a random hard to guess password for each website, and will take care of remembering the passwords for you. You only need to remember the single master password which will give you access to your password vault.
Conclusion:
The system of passwords is a crisis in computer security. If you would like to avoid getting hacked, use a password manager to generate and remember your passwords for you.
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