A Security Researcher Just Dumped 10 Million Real Passwords

Security researcher Mark Burnett released a torrent of 10 million passwords and usernames, a trove of comparatively anonymized data that he sourced from open websites from around the web. The passwords and usernames are older and most probably dead and, most importantly, Burnett sourced them from websites that were “generally available to anyone and discoverable via search engines in a plaintext (unhashed and unencrypted) format and therefore already widely available to those with an intent to defraud or gained unauthorized access to computer systems.”

Why did he do it? Password behaviors are opaque. No one knows why we choose certain passwords over others nor do they have any way of assessing the relative strength of passwords on the web. While corporations like to say their password databases are secure, how do we know? And how can they be secure when the most popular password is “password?”

Burnett writes:

Frequently I get requests from students and security researchers to get a copy of my password research data. I typically decline to share the passwords but for quite some time I have wanted to provide a clean set of data to share with the world. A carefully-selected set of data provides great insight into user behavior and is valuable for furthering password security. So I built a data set of ten million usernames and passwords that I am releasing to the public domain.
You can download the trove here.

It is interesting to note that Burnett had a great deal of trouble deciding whether he wanted to release these passwords. Because the law is often opaque regarding technical issues and legislators are ignorant when it comes to the same, people like Burnett are actually afraid to publish their research. The jailing of a journalist named Barrett Brown is one step in the long road towards self-censorship in matters of security and that can’t be the case.

So download those passwords and figure out just where you’re going wrong. I, for one, will never give up my super secure password of “ILovePizzaAndBeerLakers2015!”

Comments

Samsung Galaxy S5 Review and Giveaway

Few smartphones are as aggressively marketed as Samsung’s Galaxy S5. The S5 can no longer be considered brand-new — but it is Samsung’s flagship, at least for the next few months. With a gorgeous screen, a capable camera, a waterproof build, and a user-replaceable battery, the Galaxy S5 has a lot to offer… at least on paper. Let’s find out how good it really is. What Makes This Review Different There are about a million Galaxy S5 reviews out there. Why should you read this one? Two keys points make our review different: We bought our own device . Unlike many tech blogs, we don’t use a review unit Samsung gave us. We went out to the store and bought one, just like you would. This means everything you read here is truly impartial – we owe Samsung nothing. We used it for more than a month . Some sites rush to be the first to publish a review on a new device. That’s not how we do things. I used the Galaxy S5 as my main (and only) Android phone for nearly two months,...

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9000 Review and Giveaway

When it comes to massive phones, nothing is more iconic than the Samsung Galaxy Note. It has gained popularity not only due to its size, but its additional features such as a stylus and a larger battery make it a more useful phone. Samsung released the third generation of the Galaxy Note in October, updating the phablet with a larger screen and improved hardware. Read through our review, then join the giveaway to win the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 ! Competitors Of course, other Android competitors haven’t let the $640 Galaxy Note 3 be the only player in the phablet market. There are others such as the Sony Xperia Z Ultra , the Samsung Galaxy Mega , and the other more common phones that are reaching 5″ screens such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 , the HTC One , and the Nexus 5 . Unlike the normal-sized top contenders, the Galaxy Note 3 has a bigger screen and larger battery. It also offers specific features (surrounding the S Pen stylus) th...

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog