I just wanted to bring everyone's attention to an important issue. There is an email virus going around right now which I'm sure some of you remember from the last time it happened. Infected email accounts auto-respond with an email about "New shopping life" and provide a link to an infected webpage. DO NOT CLICK ON THESE LINKS.
If you know a member who has an infected email account, please tell them so that they can fix the issue. Muz informs me that all you need to do to fix the problem is to change your email account password (hopefully making it more secure) and adjust your auto-respond settings.
I received a number of these responses as part of the AWOL check I am administering but I've only emailed 2 of the 6 Clans. There could be many more infected accounts. Check your account.
Additionally, when responding to the AWOL check, DO NOT email me directly at my regular account but please respond to the AWOL account. I will not count you unless you respond to the MAA AWOL account. Thanks
DJM Syn Kaek
Kir Edit: I posted the full description and fix for this issue awhile back here. It isn't really a virus, it's just a bot that searches for easy-to-guess passwords. It's really annoying to get the auto-response, and it's easy to fix, so take a minute to read the post.
You need to be logged in to post comments
Unbreak my heart,
Say you love me agaaaiiinnnn;
Undo this hurt, that you caused when you walked out on my life;
Uncry these teeaaarrrrss,
I cried so many niiiights...
Don't use dictionary words (i.e. words that can be found in a dictionary) as your passwords.
Aye as there are three main ways to crack passwords.
The first is guess, which is only a threat if the 'cracker' knows your personal information. Which won't be likely in this case.
The second is a dictionary attack. Roughly 3.8 percent of myspace passwords were words that could be found in the dictionary plus a number. 2/3 of the number were 1.
The third is a brute force attack. Technically if someone was going to brute force your password it is impossible to stop unless you change your password everyday from one 20 digit combo to another, as 20 digit passwords would take years to crack.
I would recommend doing something in 1337 speak, those are rather hard to nab.
0dy3ss3y or k1llsw1tch are examples.
Hope this helped.
There are actually replacement rules for l33t in most password cracking software now, so that's less safe than it used to be. On my server I've seen them go through the dictionary word by word, like this: "journey", "j0urn3y", "j0urn3y1", etc.
It's still way better than using a plain word, since not everybody writes their l33t the same way. The most secure password is always going to be a random sequence of letters, numbers, and symbols with no other significance.