Philips Passwords Exposed by r00tbeer

A new hacktivist group named “r00tbeersec” cracked some databases at Philips, the huge Dutch electronics company, and published them on the Internet.  As reported on Sophos, this trove included on database of 400 passwords that was stored in plain text.  This is just bad management by the IT folks at Phillips.  The interesting bit is some of the passwords in the list were just so simple to begin with.  What follows are excellent examples of just plain bad password choices.  If these examples look anything like your password, you really ought to change it.

“Some examples of the poor passwords chosen are as follows:

1234
12345
123456
123457 -- nice try, but no cigar!
00000000
philips -- five appearances
ph1lips -- nice try, but no cigar!
password -- no list complete without it
qwerty -- ditto
seguro -- Spanish for "secure", it isn't
sonsname170908”

Look for my recent post on creating a strong and unique password for some guidance in this area.

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About the Author:

I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com

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