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The best site to find password leaks: Google

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Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#31

It's a shame these companies are so cheap that they don't hire real developers.

You think Fortune 500 companies don't hire complete idiots too? They just have 5 extra people for every 1 developer to double check whether or not the developer did something stupid, test the site for obvious vulns, etc.

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#32
post #21

Downmod me if you feel like, but I genuinely feel bad about HN after seeing this submission. edit: definitely downmod to make an example.

...why do you feel bad about HN just for exposing terrible security practice? Hopefully startups get shocked enough by it to tighten up their privacy policies.

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#33

i just created a google alert for my email + "filetype:sql". http://www.google.com/alerts - might as well make this work for me...

This is a great idea. Unfortunately pastebin and sites like it are generally not indexed by google.

Crawling pastebin is trivial - there was an HN story on it awhile ago, and I wrote my own from scratch as an exercise. Perhaps we should suggest this to the guy behind https://shouldichangemypassword.com/

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of tools cause more harm than good.

That's balderdash. These kinds of tools raise awareness of the issue, hopefully making more people think twice about posting private data to a public place. If they continue to be unaware of the danger of doing so, then it is simply exploited silently and everyone wonders how it happened. Your statement assumes that security through obscurity is a good thing.

At this point, you're both right - exposing these things to a massive audience just increases the number of potential attackers.

Someone ought to write a tool that follows this account, and e-mails people warning them that their e-mail has been compromised.

The hard part would be explaining what happened, how to verify it, and how to fix it to random strangers without convincing them that you're the one who just tried to steal their life savings.

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#36
post #23
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private browsing isn't going to help with sites that publish their databases in plaintext, as in the link.

Your browsing history will show your passwords that you searched for to people who use your computer. Also, next time you google search when logged on your password might also show as a suggestion. Otherwise a password-not-yet-leaked will no longer be. If you didn't turn on private browsing as I suggested and are using Safari, type the password you searched for in your URL bar now and you will see why I said what I s…

Why would you search for your passwords at all, then? Wouldn't it make more sense to search for your email and username?

And for that matter, why do you have so few that you can easily google for them instead of generating random ones per site?

(Fun fact, googling for your e-mail address reveals a hash of your password on MtGox.)

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#37

It's a shame these companies are so cheap that they don't hire real developers.

This could happen to any developer. All it takes is a dumb installation package to screw up your permissions, or something similarly trivial.

Also, it's not a matter of development, but security and system administration. They are often performed not only by different people, but sometimes even by different sub-organizations in different physical locations. It's not a good excuse, but we shouldn't be so quick to judge developers author knowing what exactly happened.

Re: The best site to find password leaks: Google

#38
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your browsing history will show your passwords that you searched for to people who use your computer. Also, next time you google search when logged on your password might also show as a suggestion. Otherwise a password-not-yet-leaked will no longer be. If you didn't turn on private browsing as I suggested and are using Safari, type the password you searched for in your URL bar now and you will see why I said what I s…

Why would you search for your passwords at all, then? Wouldn't it make more sense to search for your email and username? And for that matter, why do you have so few that you can easily google for them instead of generating random ones per site? (Fun fact, googling for your e-mail address reveals a hash of your password on MtGox.)

Maybe someone was like me and they didn't think to not search for their password which ended up on their browser history. The title had password leaks in it and that's the first thing I thought of when I got there: "Hey my MtGox password got leaked lets google it."

For that matter, I have a unique password (with the necessary special characters) for each account that associates with my identity (Not naming any examples here), but only several unique passwords for websites I don't intend to use much e.g. to read newspapers, and apparently, MtGox.

(Yes, I was searching for my MtGox. password because it was the same password I used for random throwaway sites. No I never used it, I don't even remember having confirmed my account there. My asset in bitcoins amount to I still don't understand why all the downvotes. It would've helped me if someone reminded me not to actually google my password with my browser watching. Apparently not anyone else.

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