Monthly Archives: June 2012

Midweek music: Dragonette – Let It Go

A perfect pick you up for a midweek, start of summer night:

Thanks to @adamschwabe on twitter for this.

LinkedIn and Hashcat, or why you need a better password

This was just posted: Linkedin password statistics – Pastebin.com. Stefan Venken used easy to access tools (“HashCat / Jtr and publicly found wordlists on a customer grade laptop”) and turned it on the 6.5 million linked in passwords and it turns out “1.354.946 were recovered within a few hours time”.  No special software, and no massive hardware. (Of course he knows what he is doing, but so would anyone determined to access them).

It would be ideal if every site had strong security methods to protect passwords: you need to assume the opposite and take steps to make your password strong, as well as making sure you have different passwords for different sites (especially for sites that are strongly associated with money or your identity).

For more on hashcat, go here: oclHashcat-plus – advanced password recovery

A good use of social media: check-in to Starbucks and fight AIDS

How can you do this? By participating in this event: (RED)RUSH TO ZERO | Check-In.

How does it work? Like this:

Every check-in at Starbucks and select retailers of Penfolds and Bugaboo during (RED)RUSH will trigger a donation from these proud (RED) partners to help fight AIDS. You’ll also unlock the limited edition (RED)RUSH badge – just make sure you follow (RED) on foursquare! (RED)RUSH from June 1st-10th. The beginning of the end of AIDS starts with you.