Millions of people need to follow some simple advice from the Government which will help protect them from cyber crooks. Earlier this month Express.co.uk reported on how login details were being sold on the Dark Web by cyber criminals, with the vast majority of stolen passwords being easy-to-guess phrases such as ‘123456’ or even just ‘password’. If you’ve ever struggled to come up with a password that is not only difficult to crack but easy to remember then the UK Government has just issued some handy advice.
This guidance was issued by GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency.
In a recent tweet, the official GCHQ Twitter account advised that a strong but memorable password can easily be generated by stringing together three random words.
You can make the password even harder to crack by using a mixture of capital letters and lowercase characters as well as throwing in numbers of special characters.
In a recent tweet GCHQ posted: “When you use different passwords for your important accounts, it can be hard to remember them all.
“Create strong, memorable passwords by using 3 random words.”
For further guidance, GCHQ highlighted a post on the National Cyber Security Centre website which went into more detail about why this is a good way to come up with new passwords.
The NCSC article said: “Combining 3 random words that each mean something to you is a great way to create a password that is easy to remember but hard to crack.
“Do not use words that can be guessed (like your pet’s name). You can include numbers and symbols if needed. For example, “Hippo!PizzaRocket1”.
If you regularly use the same password across different websites, or use easy-to-guess passwords across all your accounts it’s best to make these changes as soon as possible.
You can find out if any of your accounts have fallen into the hands of hackers by heading to the Have I Been Pwned website.
This site will let you know if your login details have been exposed simply by entering your email or mobile number.
If any of your logins are at risk you will be told exactly which websites you need to head to change your password, and when the security breach occurred.
The threat of stolen passwords was highlighted earlier this month in a study by Digital Shadows.
The research found more than 24 billion username and password combinations are being sold on cybercrime marketplaces.
That is equivalent to almost four times the world’s population, so there’s a chance one of your logins has been stolen without you realising it.
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