Syrian Electronic Army slurps a MILLION reader passwords from Forbes

Forbes.com has become the latest media outlet to fall to an attack by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) with the account records of more than a million people swiped.
A database containing email address and password combinations for 1,071,963 accounts was dumped online by the hacktivisits – including the records for Forbes contributors.

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Although the passwords were one-way encrypted, the publisher strongly urged its readers to change their login secrets. The team added:

The email address for anyone registered with Forbes.com has been exposed. Please be wary of emails that purport to come from Forbes, as the list of email addresses may be used in phishing attacks. We have notified law enforcement. We take this matter very seriously and apologize to the members of our community for this breach.

Just how exactly did Forbes protect its punters' passwords? After looking through the data, Sophos reckoned the site stored the information in the PHPass Portable format: each password and a random 6-byte salt were together run through the MD5 algorithm to generate a hash, and 8,192 iterations of MD5 were performed on the hash and the password. The final result was saved to the database.
Users with particularly trivial passwords will be vulnerable to a dictionary attack; although the use of salt will slow down a miscreant, MD5 is hopelessly weak. The attackers can, say, combine the password “123456” with a particular user's salt and quickly generate a hash to check against that user's database entry. If it matches, the password is revealed; if not, try again with another similarly crap password.
Now that the data is out there, people who used their Forbes.com email address and password combination to log into various other websites are at risk of losing control of multiple web accounts.
"It took about an hour, using one core of a vanilla laptop, to crack close to one-quarter of the passwords of the 500 or so Forbes employees in the database," said Sophos' Paul Ducklin.
"Astonishingly, 73 Forbes staffers (more than one-eighth of the list) had chosen a password consisting of their company's name, Forbes, followed by zero to four digits. 1 and 123 were the most common suffixes.”
Three online articles were defaced by the SEA as proof it carried out the database raid, and at the time of writing, Forbes' blog sites remain out of action.

Google buys sound authentication firm SlickLogin

SlickLogin showcased its technology at the TechCrunch Disrupt event last year. Google has acquired SlickLogin - an Israeli start-up behind the technology that allows websites to verify a user's identity by using sound waves.

It works by playing a uniquely generated, nearly-silent sound through computer speakers, which is picked up by an app on the user's smartphone.
The app analyses the sound and sends a signal back to confirm the identity.
The technology can be used either as a replacement for a password or as an additional security layer.
SlickLogin confirmed the acquisition on its website but did not provide any financial details of the deal.
"Today we`re announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way," the firm said in a statement.
"Google was the first company to offer two-step verification to everyone, for free - and they're working on some great ideas that will make the internet safer for everyone."

Secure logins

Many firms, especially those in sectors such as financial services, have been adopting a two-step verification for users.

The steps include matching the user name and the password plus a second layer of verification.
In some cases, such as online payments, companies message the user a one-time Pin on the mobile phone number associated with their account. The user then enters the Pin within a stipulated period of time to verify his or her identity.
Some other companies, like banks, issue special gadgets that generate unique codes. Users need to enter these codes to authenticate their login.
Analysts said that while these methods has been working, firms were keen to use even more secure ways to protect their users against any data theft.
"The more uniquely a technology identifies the user, the safer the system would be against any potential hacks," Sharat Sinha, a vice president with Palo Alto Networks, a firm specialising in enterprise security told the BBC.
"The problem with one-time Pins is that if someone hacks into your account, they can change the mobile number associated with it.
"Meanwhile, specialised hardware devices provided to users are something they need to carry with them all the time," he said.
Mr Sinha added that firms were looking for technology that is not only unique and highly secure, but also convenient to use.
"And anything that uses smartphones makes life easier for the users."