Hackers Crackers and Encryption
The words hacker and cracker are often misused and misinterpreted. The hacker is someone that is well learned as a student of computer tech.
And the computer hacker love's to probe and pick things apart to find a better way or to secure a hole in a firewall. So you see the computer hacker is the good guy.
The computer cracker on the other hand is all about destruction and mayhem. This is the person that tries to break into your firewall to get your personal info.
The cracker often tries whats called as a brute force attack,
this is where they have software that includes every word in the dictionary.
This software probes for passwords, if they get into your computer to begin with. Lets say they have got in, if your passwords are week say your name combined with dog or any other common word,their brute force attack might just work.
Using common passwords and typing them in at each site, is not very secure. Using a password manager for all this work is much better.
The password manager you start off with a very strong password and that's the one you need to remember. These password managers use high strength encryption, to keep your passwords safe.
Setting the password manager up is easy you just add each user name and password for each program or site and save them within the program.
The next time you want to sign in to say paypal, use your password manager to sign in,this can be done in many browsers by just dragging from your password manager to the sign in box.
There are many free software programs that help with security on the net. Truecrypt is software that can encrypt whole volumes or a hard drive.
Truecrypt and axcrypt both use at least 256 bit encryption of AES or many other methods. These methods are very very secure.
Keepass password safe is a password manager that's free and is using high encryption methods to keep your passwords safe also.
Using letters and numbers, which includes special characters are recommended for a secure password.
Nonsensical words that you can relate to put in your password manager will be to your advantage.
Here is some info on the AES encryption method AES
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) specifies a FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm (Rijndael, designed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, published in 1998) that may be used by US federal departments and agencies to cryptographically protect sensitive information [3].
TrueCrypt uses AES with 14 rounds and a 256-bit key (i.e., AES-256, published in 2001) operating in XTS mode (see the section Modes of Operation).
In June 2003, after the NSA (US National Security Agency) conducted a review and analysis of AES, the U.S. CNSS (Committee on National Security Systems) announced in [1] that the design and strength of AES-256 (and AES-192) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the Top Secret level.
This is applicable to all U.S. Government Departments or Agencies that are considering the acquisition or use of products incorporating the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to satisfy Information Assurance requirements associated with the protection of national security systems and/or national security information [1].
The words hacker and cracker are often misused and misinterpreted. The hacker is someone that is well learned as a student of computer tech.
And the computer hacker love's to probe and pick things apart to find a better way or to secure a hole in a firewall. So you see the computer hacker is the good guy.
The computer cracker on the other hand is all about destruction and mayhem. This is the person that tries to break into your firewall to get your personal info.
The cracker often tries whats called as a brute force attack,
this is where they have software that includes every word in the dictionary.
This software probes for passwords, if they get into your computer to begin with. Lets say they have got in, if your passwords are week say your name combined with dog or any other common word,their brute force attack might just work.
Using common passwords and typing them in at each site, is not very secure. Using a password manager for all this work is much better.
The password manager you start off with a very strong password and that's the one you need to remember. These password managers use high strength encryption, to keep your passwords safe.
Setting the password manager up is easy you just add each user name and password for each program or site and save them within the program.
The next time you want to sign in to say paypal, use your password manager to sign in,this can be done in many browsers by just dragging from your password manager to the sign in box.
There are many free software programs that help with security on the net. Truecrypt is software that can encrypt whole volumes or a hard drive.
Truecrypt and axcrypt both use at least 256 bit encryption of AES or many other methods. These methods are very very secure.
Keepass password safe is a password manager that's free and is using high encryption methods to keep your passwords safe also.
Using letters and numbers, which includes special characters are recommended for a secure password.
Nonsensical words that you can relate to put in your password manager will be to your advantage.
Here is some info on the AES encryption method AES
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) specifies a FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm (Rijndael, designed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, published in 1998) that may be used by US federal departments and agencies to cryptographically protect sensitive information [3].
TrueCrypt uses AES with 14 rounds and a 256-bit key (i.e., AES-256, published in 2001) operating in XTS mode (see the section Modes of Operation).
In June 2003, after the NSA (US National Security Agency) conducted a review and analysis of AES, the U.S. CNSS (Committee on National Security Systems) announced in [1] that the design and strength of AES-256 (and AES-192) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the Top Secret level.
This is applicable to all U.S. Government Departments or Agencies that are considering the acquisition or use of products incorporating the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to satisfy Information Assurance requirements associated with the protection of national security systems and/or national security information [1].
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