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A 22-YEAR-OLD hacker has been sentenced to over four years in prison for Bitcoin blackmailing crimes and for the possession of indecent images of children.
Lewys Martin plead guilty on five different counts at Southwark Crown Court in Kent and was sentenced to a total of 50 months in jail after the judge ruled some of the convictions were to be served consecutively.
Martin had used a phishing program to obtain customer banking details and 740,000 email addresses before threatening to release them if he was not paid £207,000 in the online currency Bitcoin .
Phising involves contacting users requesting information from them using fraudulent methods, often by purporting to be from a financial institution.
The blackmail threats were made to the Lloyds Banking Group and to the Sun newspaper who reported them to the Metropolitan Police’s Cyber Crime Unit.
Although Martin had illegally obtained the customer data he was unable to access the bank’s computer system.
Anonymisation software had been used to hide the blackmailer’s identity and a sample of the phished bank accounts was enclosed to demonstrate he was a genuine blackmailer.
A complex police investigation was then launched which led detectives to Martin who was then arrested.
Police forensic experts examined a seized computer and phone and identified evidence linking Martin to the blackmail. Compromised personal banking information that could be used in a fraud was also found along with three malware-based phishing programs designed to steal personal details and data.
A number of indecent images of children described as being of the most serious nature were also discovered.
Martin pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced accordingly:
Chief inspector Jason Tunn of the Metropolitan Police cyber crime said that the sentence “sends out a strong message that this type of crime is taken seriously”.
Tunn also noted that Martin was unable to defeat the bank’s security systems and used phishing techniques instead, a reminder he said to consumers of being safe online.
A good password should contain at least 8 characters.
I’ve gone for : SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs
Thank god mine is not there, it took me ages to come up with joanTHE moan…
Are you serious putting your password up….
Most used passwords from people from Cork are the same as in this list but adding the word “boy” like “123456boy”
123456bai you mean ..
And for the ladies it’s 123456 girl
Most common FB password – youokayhun
Pm me hun.
No dellcomputer is not there, so I’m safe
It’s best to avoid any family or pet names/dates. open a dictionary & find an obscure 7 or 8 letter word, learn everything about it so you don’t forget it, then add one or two numbers at the end, eg zamindar47
Generally using a dictionary is a bad idea, as lots of hacking software uses a dictionary to find passwords. So fire_Android+The42 is a lot worse then for instance hshjseuuebd even though it only has one character type. One thing that is actually safer. Is to have a really long password say 30 characters long with mixed character types, and write it down and keep in your wallet. Your Wallet is going to be far less likely to be stolen by hackers than your password cracked
My password is so clever no one will ever guess it
stuohy
I can see your disdain for using a dictionary, by your comment.
your password is still vulnerable to advanced dictionary attack (yes, that’s a thing).
Take a phrase that’s memorable to you, and not obvious to outsiders (something you say every day).
Lets say it’s “I love the journal, except for the comments”. Use this to form the base for your password, taking the first letter of each word:
Iltjeftc
Now use a sequence of 4-6 numbers which is easy to memorize, but not obvious like your date of birth. Perhaps it’s an old pin code for a card you no longer have.
Iltjeftc12345
Your sequence of characters, while not truly random, is far less vulnerable to a dictionary attack, and you have a good length of password and a randomized digit sequence to help protect it.
I saw this a while back.
A sentence that includes a percentage.
Covers all bases (according to Edward Snowdon).
Like “Mary says celibacy is 99% effective”
Mary is a slut.
Mary is 99% a slut
Something like
s5Td9#Hy4k$
But I would never remember it….
Superman is also a popular choice.
I used to have Superpandaman, my nickname was panda in case you were wondering
Mine is 10987654321 so I’m alright.
date of birth backwards!
mine is abcdefg.
oh shite now everyone knows
trustno1 is an old reliable.
And I really hope people get that reference.
Use a different password on every site. Avoid sites that limit the length of your password, three mobile for example max ten characters. That should NEVER be one of the rules when entering passwords.
that’s a lot of passwords.
I have a common password, at least, for garbage sites I don’t trust but wouldn’t give much away. At that level I’m more concerned about their storage of passwords than I am the strength.
Truekey password manager. 2 factor authentication and unique passwords for every site without having to rember them all. http://www.truekey.com
Never liked the idea of password managers… too many eggs in the one basket.
If you have a briliant memory then fair play. But typically people end up using the same password on all sites which is another eggs-in-one-basket situation except that one of thse sites is probablybstoring the password with weak hashing or worse – in plain text.
Pick a changeable password. One method is to pick a random word like epiphany and change the third letter to the first letter of the site you’re using. So for Facebook it would be epfphany. Add numbers and capitals as required.
Or two random words like epiphanyhorse
I have my password as ‘incorrect’ so I’m always reminded if i forget it.
Still remember password for mainframe in college. L3FTBJ.
Cannot spot difference between number 2 & 24! Am Imisaong somwthing?
The ‘o’ is a zero ’0′.
No guest on the list??? People are learning!
Use a password manager like lastpass to create and remember your passwords. It uses TNO security to encrypt your database. Then you only need to remember a handful of -pass phrases-. Use 12+ character sentences with no spacing. Caps, numbers, and special characters are less important cryptographically than length but some services require it so put one number, cap and special in.
When they interviewed serious hackers they used social engineering to make the hosting company send a new password or they compromise your PC via free wifi hacks or exploits in script so it doesn’t matter what you type
Use special characters like @ or # or ^ as well as upper and lower case letters and numbers in passwords. Most modern systems allow blank spaces in passwords as well…. “1394 T!ckEt$ t0 Go” – Don’t use this example!!
Take a line from a favourite song then use the first letter from each word to create a password.
You’ll always remember the song.
My favourite password is….. The pen is in Joan’s mouth, can get that wrong with The penis in Joan’s mouth lol
That damn spacebar lol.
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