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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Tag Archives: passwords
Secure Yourself in 2012
It’s a new year, and with a new year comes those things called “resolutions.” You know, the promises you make to yourself that you eventually don’t do, or just for get about entirely. But some are slightly easier to do than others. And while I don’t want you to resolve to be more secure online in 2012, I do want you to be more secure online in 2012. Continue reading
XKCD & Password Security
If you were on the internet last week, you probably saw an article, twitter, or Facebook post about the xkcd comic on password strength. The comic, which was (most likely) inspired by an article entitled, “The Usability of Passwords” basically says that using a multi-word password (3 or more words), is more secure than what I have referred to as “complex passwords” in past articles on this blog. The writer of the original article makes the point (which is what the xkcd comic points to) that passwords using three or more dictionary words, has more entropy and is thus harder to crack, therefore making them more secure. While there is a bit of truth to the article, it leads to some false understandings of how hackers actually go about hacking passwords, and make assumptions that aren’t entirely accurate. Continue reading
Using Secure Passwords
This morning, this article about a Facebook board member’s account being breached inspired me to touch on passwords again. I’ve talked about secure passwords in the past, but on a daily basis I am confronted by people that talk about not wanting to use a more secure password because it “would be hard to remember” but then they will complain when their Facebook or Twitter accounts are hacked. Continue reading
Michael Koby 
My Thoughts on LastPass
If you’ve known me for any length of time, you probably know that I highly encourage everyone to use a password vault of some kind. There are several good ones available some of them are free, other’s cost money. Over the years I’ve tried several and the ones I’ve used the most are KeePass and more recently LastPass. Continue reading →