Re: Passwords & Passphrases

[Mike Iglesias <iglesias () UCI EDU>]

Bob Bayn wrote:
> What finally prompted us to get off our "any 4 or more characters"
> butts was dictionary attacks that were hitting our proxy server
> and VPN server from Chinese IP addresses.  Once past our firewall
> through proxy or VPN they are able to snoop our network from inside
> probing machines undetected,  and do unappreciated things like
> download subscription databases from the library until the provider
> got suspicious of the traffic.

We see some of this too, but I'm pretty sure most of logins from China are
using passwords captured by keyloggers, not password guessing.  There's no
pattern of repeated login attempts to the accounts used - they just log in,
log out, and move on to the next account/password.


--
Mike Iglesias                          Email:       iglesias () uci edu
University of California, Irvine       phone:       949-824-6926
Network & Academic Computing Services  FAX:         949-824-2069