Please don't use simple passwords for anything connected to internet

I spent my Black Friday de-commissioning an old PBX server. PBX servers are used to interconnect Voice phone calls. Someone took advantage of a vulnerability on my old server and installed a tool called “SIPVICIOUS”. They then used that tool to consume 200mbps of bandwidth 24x7 for the last 28 hours to hack phone services all over the world. My old server had been upgraded to the latest security patches just last week.

I popped into the machine and found the “password list”, the hacker had cracked dozens of sites finding passwords like: 1234, Password, securepassword, pass1234.

If you have something that uses a password, make it at least 8 characters, toss one or two of those characters above the numbers in there (not adjacent keys) to give yourself some protection.

A simple trick that works well is to choose 2 simple words, stick them together, add a random number from 1 to 100, then put a weird character between the 2 words. For example : Blue*Pizza99