A local digital security expert has issued a warning about online attacks by cyber criminals. Mark Riddell - of m3 networks - said passwords can be guessed by crooks studying someone’s digital footprint.
The boss of the the Perth-based company that also has a support team in Dundee warned that something as innocent as a photo of your child’s birthday party or a memory of a childhood pet can be used to guess critical passwords.
Speaking to the Dundee and Angus Chamber of Commerce, Mark explained: “Even though you may have forgotten, the internet never forgets content you posted years ago.
“Cyber criminals use a range of tools to try to access a business’s accounts. Automated tools that brute force try thousands of weak passwords are popular."
And he added: "But so is social engineering, where they will study a person’s digital footprint to look for ideas.
“You might consider using your childhood dog’s name to be a safe password, but it probably isn’t.
“Especially when you did a Facebook post 7 years ago about how much you miss your dog… including its name.”
Mark explained that everyone has a digital footprint – information about them that can be accessed by anyone online.
Bosses of local companies might be careful about what they post today. But cyber criminals will look up content from when they were much younger.
He added: “The best way to avoid this risk is to use long randomly generated passwords, and use a different password for each account.
“You should also use software called a password manager to remember these passwords for you, and fill in the login boxes across all of your devices.”
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