Page 19 - 11Cyber
P. 19
late or doesn’t come, follow up
• Be cautious of participating in viral memes such as
“name your most memorable concert.”
• Set strict privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, Pin-
terest, Instagram, and LinkedIn
If you are a victim of identity theft, report it to the FTC
online and create an account to create a report and gen-
erate a recovery plan. You will gain access to recovery
plan updates and prefilled form letters to send to credi-
(Continued from page 18) tors. You should also report medical identity theft to
Medicare’s fraud office and tax identity theft to the IRS.
• Protect your social security number – only give it out
It should be clear that you want to avoid this, so a little
when absolutely necessary
awareness and preventative steps can help prevent po-
• Be aware of billing cycles – if financial information is tentially serious problems.
PASS (word)
The Beef, the Hash, the Salt for Einstein, and a Dictionary
By Arthur Gresham
Editor, UCHUG Drive Light Under the Computer Hood User Group
Passwords and Hash, Part 1 The Beef
The Meeting Several issues were raised in that
At the September 2021 meeting questioning the validity of
UCHUG General Meeting, the secure password methods, ease or
two primary presentation topics difficulty of hacking into some sys-
were closely related in the area tem with or without an individual's
of Security: SMISHING and true password, difficulty of
2FA. In addition, and coinci- 'Cracking' someone's password, or many passwords
dentally, October is National Security Awareness in a system database. We did not all
Month. agree and had some small but lively
BEEF. Obviously, there are many well
Discussion after the presentations moved into -trained specialists in this area respon-
questions concerning the passwords we use on all sible for creating secure methods and
the sites and services on the internet. Several protecting systems from the loss of
questions and opinions were shared about manag- your password. But many of the meth-
ing our passwords, how to build passwords, securi- ods used are not easy to understand
ty of passwords, and the impact of losses from the and involve sophisticated mathemati-
frequent Data Breaches from small and large busi- cal methods. As a result, there are a
nesses, government, and anyone operating a web- lot of myths and misconceptions about
site using Password technologies having sensitive
information stolen. (Continued on page 20)
Cyber Awareness Bulletin 19 October 2021
