What's your Password?

Today, the use of cash for everyday purchases is already beginning to transition to digital currencies such as bitcoin, also, the use of payment apps is increasing by the second. Soon, physical money will be obsolete and apps such as Cash App and PayPal will be used instead. No more worrying about them Benjamin’s in your wallet. What you should really be worried about is…. your password — the entry to all things you, and most importantly, your money. Social Media — what would we do without it. We post our entire lives online for the world to see and wonder, “hOw dID I gEt hAcKeD?” All it takes is a quick scan of anyone’s profile(s) and you can gather their birthday, full name (usually), significant others, important dates, pets and, I mean, the list goes on. This information can then be used to compile a wordlist of possible passwords for a person which can then be automated through a simple python or bash script/program to input every possible password until the correct one is found. This may sound like a long shot but, believe me, you would be surprised how often people use important dates, pet names and significant others for their password. An example would be, “Spot123”. In the coming years, your password(s) will be worth everything. Walking down a dark street you encounter a shady character. He approaches you and says, “What’s your password?”, with a gun pointed at you. Would do you do? Do you fight back? Do you surrender? Because if you surrender, you will not just lose your wallet and a few bucks, you will lose it all (They will have access to all your money). Times have changed and so has the methods used to take advantage of others. Once this realization has set in with criminals, illegal activity and crimes will change but increase. People will either fight back or lose it all. There is no middle ground. People really underestimate the worth of a password, especially in the digital world we live in. Hackers today already sell massive lists of valid login credentials of users on various platforms including PayPal and Instagram for far below what they are worth on Hacking forums and dark web markets. Some people (criminals) have already realized the value of passwords but not entirely. These attacks are more on a mass scale today and will become more targeted and specific soon. All this talk of passwords and we have forgotten one thing. Your Username. Without this, a password is useless. So be wary of whom you share your online information with. If I know username/email/phone number, perform social engineering (Research YOU all over the internet), compile a wordlist and run it through a program and, Boom, I am in. Or someone could impersonate a friend or relative, which is very common, especially with the vast amount of information online of us all. (Which is mostly put online by us) My point here is that we basically provide criminals with all the needed information to exploit us. A quick trip to their profile will usually reveal the answers you seek.

What information will you give them today?