I got tired of being Hacked! - RV-Dreams Community Forum

PIEERE · RV-Dreams Family Member

I got tired of being Hacked!

Danny and Cheryl · RV-Dreams Family Member

Don't know about closing an account but just change your password. that should help.

PIEERE · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have always had problems with Yahoo, spam; viruses; and it loads up your other email accounts as well! Opera browser beats most others Hands down! Got rid of Yahoo and not many problems at all! Just was some information I felt was pertinent to pass along!

Danny and Cheryl · RV-Dreams Family Member

I went to a Mac an that took care of all of my problems

PIEERE · RV-Dreams Family Member

hmm Not everyone can afford a Mac, unless it's from McDonald's!! biggrin confuse LOL!

carolinakids · RV-Dreams Family Member

Amen

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

PIEERE wrote:
Not everyone can afford a Mac, unless it's from McDonald's!! LOL!

That's kind of an outdated truth…years ago it was correct but not any longer. You an still buy a Windows machine cheaper than a Mac if you try…but to a large extent that's because the cheaper Windows machines have lower quality components. If you stick to better known brands…Compaq or similar for instance and stay away from machines put together by Joe's Backyard Computer Maker…and if you match specs then you'll find that Macs are right in line with the other higher quality computer makers.

Then there's the much simpler system maintenance and the almost universal lack of any viruses, malware, crapware, adware, etc that exist on the Mac platform. I was a long time Windows system admin back when I was working…and I have to agree that it's a great operating system if you have an IT department. However, for home users that don't have an IT department it just requires a lot more care and feeding than a Mac does.

For instance…Windows, particularly the consumer grade operating systems…need to be rebuilt much more often than a Mac does…and for the most part it's pretty much impossible for your grand mother to successfully do so. Apple's OS…simply because it's unix based and a whole bunch of other good stuff that I won't bore you with…just doesn't need to be rebuilt very often. In the unlikely event that it needs to be done…I guarantee that your grand mother can successfully do it…boot to the built in recovery disk on the laptop/desktop, select reinstall the OS and it goes from there. Doesn't lose your data, doesn't ask you questions you don't know the answer to (assuming you're the grand mother)…it just goes about fixing whatever is wrong.

Adding and removing apps is trivial on a Mac…you drag a single item from the installer CD over to the Mac HD…put it anywhere you want it…it's done and it works. Windows apps…almost always require an installer and frequently give you zero choice about where they get installed. Uninstalling an app on a Windows machine…almost always requires an installer and even then rarely uninstalls everything. On a Mac…simply drag it to the trash then empty the trash…done…there is no step 3.

I can't tell you the number of very experienced Windows sysadmins…including me…who refused to have a Windows machine at home. We messed with that crap all day…when we get home we don't want to troubleshoot a dll conflict, we just want it to work.

My current Mac laptop has been through at least 5 versions of the operating system without a reinstallation required. Simply download the installer from Apple when it's released and run it…installs right over the top of the old one and you're done.

Apple's operating system is free…been that way at least 6 or 8 years…and to this day you still have to buy Windows unless it comes with your computer or unless you fall into the right Microsoft bucket of "it's free until next Tuesday" or "it's free under these other six conditions but not under these 5".

As to being hacked…that's most likely a password problem…the majority of computer users simply have bad passwords and then reuse them on every web site. Use long passwords…they don't necessarily have to be hard to remember…and use a password manager to manage them for you……and you'll be reasonably protected. Sure, yahoo might have a breach…but they only get your yahoo password and not the one password you used everywhere.

Use something like "My name is Pierre!!" as your password…that's a far more secure password than obhEKHb87$%. If anybody wants me to blather on about how to make and use a secure password please let me know and I'll toss up a post about it…I actually only remember 3 or 4 of my passwords…laptop, phone, and master password for my password manager…everything else is stored in the manager and they're long, complex, and impossible to remember. The 3 I do remember are long, still complex since they have upper, lower, number, and symbol…but they have the advantage of being easy to remember but hard to crack.

-- Edited by Neil and Connie on Wednesday 15th of March 2017 02:01:37 PM

BiggarView · RV-Dreams Family Member

Not sure you can afford a Big Mac either.... It could give you a heart attack and an expensive stay in the hospital if you survive LOL.

Danny and Cheryl · RV-Dreams Family Member

Neil what pass word manager do you recommend . As for the price of a Mac you can pay a lot or shop on their refurb site and get one for a really good price

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I'm a "refurbed Mac" guy. Too pricey new, but great as a refurb. I'm not extremely technical (with regard to computers, but I was fascinated by the comparative password strength using the two examples you cited (My name is Pierre!!) vs the far more complex looking one. To my untrained eye, the more complicated one would appear more secure. I would be very interested in why "My name is Pierre!!" is so strong as a password.

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

Danny and Cheryl wrote:
Neil what pass word manager do you recommend . As for the price of a Mac you can pay a lot or shop on their refurb site and get one for a really good price

1Password is the best I believe but LastPass is also acceptable. Steve Gibson of Security Now podcast fame did a full review awhile back and these were rated the best. Both are cross platform and all the cloud sync method has is the encrypted blob With it only being decrypted on your device. Both have web browser integration and all the other bells and whistles you want. LastPass is subscription only while 1Password is either subscription if you use their sync service Or pay once and use DropBox for sync. Cost for either is in the 50/year range.

I like 1Password better because of interface and because it has different types of database entries…logins, credit cards, passports, software license keys and my favorite Secure Notes. Very well done system.

You simply need to remember the manager master password and none of the rest of them.

You can get returns cheaper. It as I only purchase every 4 years or so I usually get the current model. No reason to start out behind current technology unless cost is a driver…fortunately that's not the case for us.

-- Edited by Neil and Connie on Thursday 16th of March 2017 05:55:20 AM

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

RonC wrote:
…but I was fascinated by the comparative password strength using the two examples you cited (My name is Pierre!!) vs the far more complex looking one. To my untrained eye, the more complicated one would appear more secure. I would be very interested in why "My name is Pierre!!" is so strong as a password.

Ron, basically it comes down to length. Here's the short version of the story, if you want the rest I can blather on for several paragraphs about it.

Passwords should be at least 18 characters…this is currently "long enough". Passwords can be cracked in several ways…first is simply guessing every possible password usually known as a Dictionary Attack. Next is a Rainbow Table attack which essentially has every possible password in a database…it's quicker to look up an entry in the database than it is to take the next password in the sequential dictionary and see if it works. Once you get to 17 characters…this falls apart due to the size of the database and ensures that some older Windows encryption schemes that can potentially be still used…more than 17 ensures that Windows won't use them. Once you get to 18 or more…the only way that's really possible is brute force try every password and in that case the longer it is the longer it takes.

Passwords should have all 4 of the basic food groups…upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols. Something like "My name is Pierre" has 3 of the 4 and is longer than the other one (so it's better) as well as easy to remember and easy to type. You never want to use a simple dictionary word as your password as that falls to the Dictionary Attack…but that entire phrase isn't in the dictionary as a single entry even though the individual words are, hence it survives the dictionary attack. If you make it long enough then not having numbers or symbols doesn't matter as much as the extra length adds complexity that the lack of numbers/symbols removes.

If you want to test how secure a password is…I recommend going to https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm and sticking in a potential password…it's all done in your browser window and not on the website so you haven't potentially compromised anything by using it. The My name is Pierre!! example has an 85 (of a possible 95 total standard characters on the keyboard…you can use umlauts and such to make it even more complex but they're harder to type), is 19 long so it's long enough, and it takes as little as 14.67 trillion centuries (at 100 trillion guesses per second in a massive cracking array scenario) to as much as 1.47 trillion trillion centuries (at an online cracking scenario at 1000 guesses per second) to try every password. Statistically it will take an average of half those times to crack, and obviously you could be less if you started your sentence with "A"…as most brute force techniques simply start with A, then B, then C…then a, b, c…then Aa, Ab, Ac…etc. It's easier to write the code that way and there's no appreciable difference in performance if you use something more tricky in the brute force scenario.

I wouldn't pick that particular sentence…any you don't want any "famous" sentence or line from a book like Four score and seven years ago or Call me Ishmael…cracking software is usually smart enough to include some dictionary type attacks as well as the brute force guesses and they are smart enough to add famous quotes like that in their dictionary. So choose your own sentence…or even just chose 3 words that are 5 characters long, there's a random word picker known as diceware located at http://rumkin.com/tools/password/diceware.php that when used in conjunction with an online 5 side dice rolling page will give you random words. Do this a couple of times until you get 3 words that sort of make sense to you…then add in a couple of numbers and a symbol or two and voila…a great, hard to guess, and easy to remember password…and as it turns out even though the words on the diceware list are listed on the internet this random method makes it long enough so that it's a good password.

So it's easy…length is your friend. I actually used the password "I like to drink cold Guinness!!!" one one of my highly classified networks back in the day as the super-duper root password…at 32 characters it didn't really matter that it had no numbers…although I think I ended up adding a single number to it because the security wonks made me include that requirement in the password rules.

Let me know if I should blather on more (or even ask via PM if the rest of the board is bored)

-- Edited by Neil and Connie on Thursday 16th of March 2017 06:24:34 AM

-- Edited by Neil and Connie on Thursday 16th of March 2017 06:27:55 AM

Barb and Frank · RV-Dreams Family Member

Excellent information from Neil and Connie - thank you!

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I agree. Excellent information. I had no idea about the length thing, but once explained, it makes perfect sense. Thanks for the education!

BTW ... you said "You can get returns cheaper. It as I only purchase every 4 years or so I usually get the current model. No reason to start out behind current technology unless cost is a driver…fortunately that's not the case for us."

I use my 2012 MacBook Pro with a 1TB Hard Drive and use an external 1TB SSD connected by a lightning connection. I use Carbon Copy Cloner and cloned the Mac's HD to the SSD and boot from the SSD and actually use the Mac's HD as a backup to the SSD in daily use. Done this way, the computer is SSD fast and HD cheap. The added benefit is that I always have a bootable clone so data is fully backed up and protected at all times. I did use Drop Box, but now that we're on the road it's too GB hungry, so I do my backups locally.

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

We use our laptops (mid 2015 retina MBP and 2013 or 2014 Air) as our daily drivers but keep little data on them. All the real data (other than what gets written to home directory automatically) lives on a mini connected to the TV in the rig. The mini has 1 USB drive that's the repository for data as well as Time Machine backups for the laptops. The data drive gets cloned via CCC daily to another drive, every other day to another, and weekly on different days to another 2 drives (as an ex sysadmin I'm paranoid about backups). The really important stuff lives on DropBox so it's backed up to the cloud and we share a bunch of folders on our DropBox accounts. I've got an "offsite" backup out in the truck…it's another clone that happens whenever I remember to bring it in plus another clone in the truck of just the data on the main data drive and not the OS and such.

I use JungleDisk to also backup to Amazon's S3 storage…that's about $5/month in fee…but it doesn't get backed up nearly as often due to bandwidth limitations that we're all familiar with.

I've got another few drives laying around as well…bootable partitions for everything from Sierra back to about Mountain Lion or so.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

On this subject, especially, pay attention to Neil. He'd tell you his prior security clearance as pertains to things "IT" and computers, "but then . . . ." Well, you know the rest of that line. While a Mac person he still knows and is well qualified on things Windows.

How to delete your Yahoo account