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Forgotten Password Questions Too Easy to Crack, Study Finds

by Dan Reilly on May 19, 2009 at 06:12 AM


Remember when Sarah Palin's e-mail account was accessed by a 20-year-old student who guessed the answer to her Yahoo! security question (where she and husband Todd first met)? Well, the former VP candidate is just one of many whose "forgotten password" questions are way too easy for others to guess, according to a new study published in the Technology Review..

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft found that 28-percent of 130 participants had their security questions correctly answered by people they know and trust. Another 17-percent were vulnerable to people they knew, but didn't trust. The problem, it seems, lies with both users and the ineffectiveness of the security method itself.

For instance, the report found that one out of five people forget the answers to their questions and that a small but significant amount of people can't remember their answers within three to six months. That probably explains why people choose simple questions -- like "what is your favorite town?" and "what is your favorite sports team?" -- that are easily guessable by others who have even minimal knowledge of their intended victim. In the end, it creates an easier method for someone to gain unauthorized access than guessing the main password itself.

The experts interviewed by MIT's Technology Review offer different tactics to combat the problem -- one says to choose the questions without common answers, while another enters random answers to avoid it entirely (and calls a company's customer service line if he needs help).

It seems there's no solution that will work for everybody, but we highly recommend taking a look at your accounts now and judging how secure both this method and your password itself are. If you're still using "password" to log in and you're relying on someone being too stupid to figure out that your favorite color is blue, then you deserve to be scammed. [From: Technology Review]

Tags: hackers, password, sarah palin, SarahPalin, security, studies, study, top

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