Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks. A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live …

Matt Burgess tries to only use passkeys. The results are mixed. [...]

After 175 million failed password guesses, a judge rules that the Canadian police must return a suspect’s phone. [Judge] Carter said the investigation can continue without the phones, and he noted that Ottawa police have made a formal request to obtain more data from Google. “This strikes me …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Nearly 71 million unique credentials stolen for logging into websites such as Facebook, Roblox, eBay, and Yahoo have been circulating on the Internet for at least four months, a researcher said Wednesday. Troy Hunt, operator of the Have I Been Pwned? breach notification service, said …

Enlarge / Close up of hand holding smartphone and screen applications with unlocking mobile phones. Concept of technological safety. (credit: Getty Images) By now, you’ve probably heard about a vulnerability named AutoSpill, which can leak credentials from any of the seven leading password managers for Android. The threat it …

Enlarge (credit: Victor De Schwanberg/Science Photo Library via Getty Images) Despite more than a decade of reminding, prodding, and downright nagging, a surprising number of developers still can’t bring themselves to keep their code free of credentials that provide the keys to their kingdoms to anyone who …

There’s a new Cisco vulnerability in its Emergency Responder product: This vulnerability is due to the presence of static user credentials for the root account that are typically reserved for use during development. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by using the account to log in to an …

Remember last November, when hackers broke into the network for LastPass—a password database—and stole password vaults with both encrypted and plaintext data for over 25 million users? Well, they’re now using that data break into crypto wallets and drain them: $35 million and counting, all going …

Gandalf is an interactive LLM game where the goal is to get the chatbot to reveal its password. There are eight levels of difficulty, as the chatbot gets increasingly restrictive instructions as to how it will answer. It’s a great teaching tool. I am stuck on Level 7 …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) All-In-One Security, a WordPress security plugin installed on more than 1 million websites, has issued a security update after being caught three weeks ago logging plaintext passwords and storing them in a database accessible to website admins. The passwords were logged when users of a …

Amusing parody of password rules. BoingBoing : For example, at a certain level, your password must include today’s Wordle answer. And then there’s rule #27: “At least 50% of your password must be in the Wingdings font.” [...]

Examples of dumb password rules. There are some pretty bad disasters out there. My worst experiences are with sites that have artificial complexity requirements that cause my personal password-generation systems to fail. Some of the systems on the list are even worse: when they fail they don’t tell …

This is the result of a security audit: More than a fifth of the passwords protecting network accounts at the US Department of the Interior—including Password1234, Password1234!, and ChangeItN0w!—were weak enough to be cracked using standard methods, a recently published security audit of the agency found. [...] The …

Last August, LastPass reported a security breach, saying that no customer information—or passwords—were compromised. Turns out the full story is worse : While no customer data was accessed during the August 2022 incident, some source code and technical information were stolen from our development environment and used to …

The company was hacked, and customer information accessed. No passwords were compromised. [...]

Twitter is having intermittent problems with its two-factor authentication system: Not all users are having problems receiving SMS authentication codes, and those who rely on an authenticator app or physical authentication token to secure their Twitter account may not have reason to test the mechanism. But users have been …

Sometimes browser spellcheckers leak passwords : When using major web browsers like Chrome and Edge, your form data is transmitted to Google and Microsoft, respectively, should enhanced spellcheck features be enabled. Depending on the website you visit, the form data may itself include PII­—including but not limited to Social …

Since the broad launch of our multi-factor authentication (MFA) security key program, customers have been enthusiastic about the program and how they will use it to improve their organizations’ security posture. Given the level of interest, we’re expanding eligibility for the program to allow more US-based AWS account …

Thought experiment story of someone of someone who lost everything in a house fire, and now can’t log into anything: But to get into my cloud, I need my password and 2FA. And even if I could convince the cloud provider to bypass that and let me in …

These techniques are not new, but they’re increasingly popular :...some forms of MFA are stronger than others, and recent events show that these weaker forms aren’t much of a hurdle for some hackers to clear. In the past few months, suspected script kiddies like the Lapsus$ data …

Enlarge (credit: Elena Lacey) After years of tantalizing hints that a passwordless future is just around the corner, you're probably still not feeling any closer to that digital unshackling. Ten years into working on the issue, though, the FIDO Alliance, an industry association that specifically works on secure authentication …

Oops : Instead of telling you when it’s safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating ‘CHANGE PASSWORD.’ Something’s gone terribly wrong here. [...]

A vulnerability (just patched) in the random number generator used in the Kaspersky Password Manager resulted in easily guessable passwords: The password generator included in Kaspersky Password Manager had several problems. The most critical one is that it used a PRNG not suited for cryptographic purposes. Its single source …

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Google is adding its password checkup feature to Android, making the mobile OS the latest company offering to give users an easy way to check if the passcodes they’re using have been compromised. Password Checkup works by checking credentials entered into apps against a …

This is bad : More than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls, VPN gateways, and access point controllers contain a hardcoded admin-level backdoor account that can grant attackers root access to devices via either the SSH interface or the web administration panel. [...] Installing patches removes the backdoor account, which, according to Eye …