I take my
laptop’s security a bit casually, largely because there is nothing particularly
curious to be found in my laptop. At least nothing of the sort that once it
becomes public can blow up that fragile thing called reputation. So when I bought
my laptop in mid 2008 I casually set the administrator’s password as ... well
.. ‘password’, and felt like it was the smartest act of the day. Who could have
guessed that somebody’s password could be ‘password’? I was
alright, that eureka moment became a fading memory over the course of some four
years and I did many such ‘smart’ things all along the way.. until .... Until I
came across an article in the TIME magazine ‘These Are the 25 Worst Passwords of 2012’ by Olivia B. Waxman, Oct. 25, 2012. This article has revealed a list of 25 ‘worst’
passwords compiled from the common passwords posted by hackers, by a company
called SplashData, which makes password-management applications.
Well the heartbreak of the day was that my ingenious little ‘password’ has
topped the list. Yes pappu pass ho gaya! .. The article opens up as ‘If any of your passwords are on this list, then
shame on you — and go change them now.’ I felt like, something between, the Spanish Knight whose inner sense of glory went crashing down and spilled, like an egg on the hard floor, when he was rudely told that the evil knights that he has overwhelmed were actually windmills ... and the proud Nazi POW who was the incharge of encrypting Third Reich's naval gameplans, suddenly came across Prof. Turing who greeted him by juggling the Bombe and the Enigma Machine .. Mein Gott ..schrecklich Katastrophe ..!!
P.S. In the wake of such disturbing events I have
categorically changed my ‘password’ to ********* so rest assured it wont figure
up in any TIME top 25 list for the next 25 years!
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