Passwords Can Sit on Hard Disks for Years

CygnusXII writes ""As people spend more time on the web and hackers become more sophisticated, the dangers of storing personal information on computers are growing by the day, security experts say. There are some obvious safeguards, such as never allowing your computer to store your passwords. But even that is no guarantee of security." "

Comments

P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how easy it is to find people's password files shared on P2P apps like DirectConnect, Gnutella, etc. There's everything - Total Commander (FTP), WS FTP, mail clients, you just have to search for the proper file name.

of course, I've used the same password for years..

[rickthewizkid]

... and nobody's figured it out yet. I actually use several passwords, depending on the level of security. The "lowest" password, "password", is used for signing up to things like mailing lists, etc where there's little chance of me returning. The mid-level password, a pair of words with numbers in them, is used for mid-level security, such as my email, etc. The highest level password, a random collection of numbers, letters, and symbols, is used for the most secure information, such as my bank account, slashdot login and my pr0n encryption key.

Now if I could only remember the combination to my safe.....

Just my 46fctfj6&*23's worth....
-Rick the WizKid
(oooops...)

Re:Hehe

[Mortoc]

The fact that a password can sit on a hard drive is really irrevelent. If someone has access to your hard drive, they might as well just set up a keylogger and wait till you access a bank account or something, that would be much easier than wading through hundreds of megabytes of swap. This security hole is almost completely irrevelent, the only time that I would worry about something like that is when throwing away a a computer (which should be recycled anyway). Someone interested enough could go through your trash, removed an old hard drive and start snooping around.