The Wages of Password Re-use: Your Money or Your Life
Summary: Krebs on Security recounts how Ukrainian cybercrime forum administrator Sergey "Fly" Vovnenko was caught after re-using the same password for his forum admin account and an email account he used to spy on his fiancée, and that forum was later hacked with all email addresses and hashed passwords exposed. Krebs writes that many cybercriminals have worse operational security than average users, citing botnet control panels and forum admin credentials full of passwords like password1 and 123qweasd.
What's compelling: The same password that gave investigators access to Vovnenko's forwarded wedding-planning emails and his location in Naples is the failure mode sitting in your own credential stores - and a single reused password is enough to connect identities an attacker or investigator would otherwise never link.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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