The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.

Wayne Dyer (b 1940)

Top 100 Worst Passwords of All Time

This list is a compilation of 49 leaks and hacks that were made public.
The Master Passwords 2014 Wordlist is composed of about 598,712,000 real passwords.
The details are explained below in the < Rant > part. 

If anyone has news about:
 1) WPT Amateur Poker League
 2) eBay 
Please let me know, we could find a mutually beneficial exchange of information.

I have bad news for you:
In the past 20 years, computers have evolved incredibly fast.  Alas, our brains did not and people are still really bad at picking passwords.  As we've been stuck with the same brain for a while, we tend to think alike and people keep on picking the same (bad) passwords, or patterns over and over again. The bad news?  a quick statistical analysis will provide you (or me) (or the bad guy) with enough ammo to rip your  

This list differs slightly from the previous with newcomers to the top 100, mainly thanks to Adobe "House-Of-Cards" Protocol: A single user can reveal the password of 10,000 1,911,938 others (exactly) (within minutes)


Take a look below and you'll be surprised.

The full Master Passwords list is available here
Passwords in italic are patterns based



Rank Count Password Rank Count Password Rank Count Password
1 1343751 123456 34 34986 charlie 67 23946 internet
2 523769 123456789 35 34969 computer 68 23832 asdfasdf
3 411288 password 36 34771 asdfgh 69 23713 zxcvbnm
4 223699 12345678 37 34711 nicole 70 23508 buster
5 211665 adobe123 38 34157 michelle 71 23497 1qaz2wsx
6 146405 1234567 39 34108 superman 72 23353 asdfghjkl
7 145684 qwerty 40 33875 tigger 73 23294 555555
8 127770 111111 41 33376 chocolate 74 23026 753951
9 123196 12345 42 32941 121212 75 22795 summer
10 99254 iloveyou 43 32684 soccer 76 22786 123qwe
11 92613 123123 44 31825 fuckyou 77 22636 alexander
12 89501 000000 45 30539 football 78 22594 rockyou
13 89196 abc123 46 29749 jordan 79 22474 killer
14 85660 1234567890 47 29309 master 80 22198 pepper
15 83473 photoshop 48 28928 jennifer 81 22109 fdsa
16 63929 princess 49 28842 987654321 82 21919 asdasd
17 63158 1234 50 28760 112233 83 21470 qazwsx
18 57964 654321 51 28538 liverpool 84 21135 222222
19 56758 adobe1 52 28516 hannah 85 20920 ginger
20 56680 macromedia 53 27841 adobeadobe 86 20470 freedom
21 49519 azerty 54 27459 qwertyuiop 87 20329 trustno1
22 48551 monkey 55 27337 purple 88 20192 samsung
23 47852 sunshine 56 27321 andrea 89 20094 abcd1234
24 47325 aaaaaa 57 26987 thomas 90 20030 dreamweaver
25 45067 666666 58 26340 joshua 91 19950 abcdef
26 44412 daniel 59 25745 andrew 92 19811 102030
27 42761 michael 60 25636 welcome 93 19374 11111111
28 40643 password1 61 25596 secret 94 19017 123654
29 39260 123321 62 25250 whatever 95 18965 123123123
30 38144 jessica 63 24564 7777777 96 18022 abc
31 36577 shadow 64 24221 1q2w3e4r 97 17981 matrix
32 36170 letmein 65 24103 maggie 98 17166 1q2w3e
33 35385 dragon 66 24049 baseball 99 17056 test
100 16600 asdfghj


< Rant >

Thank you Adobe! 
Having 130 million accounts leaked online was already pretty bad, but thanks to some incredible stupidity, or disregard to your customers, you've chosen to use the same symmetric key and one bad choice after another:
1) All identical passwords have the same Key
2) Adobe left the hint in *clear*
3) Then some people just give out their passwords, flat-out, in the "Hint" field. 

A Hint is something that should somewhat subtle, alas, this is not understood by everyone.

Anyone, with two neurons connected can now collect millions of passwords with the corresponding email address. Heeeyaaaa!  Spammers and criminals are thanking you! 

Please allow me a small smörgÃ¥sbord of examples, with some of them waiting to receive a Darwin Award. 

[edited]@yahoo.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-Color Starts with P|--
- humm....  pellow? plue? preen? pose?  Though one...  purple maybe?

Now that we have a serious hint that "6KJbvp1JGKY=" equals purple, all you have to do is to confirm it: Just read the hints , they are in *clear*.

[edited]@gmail.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-What is the color of plums?|--
[edited]@shaw.ca-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-colour purple|--
[edited]@hotmail.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-a color almost the same as violet|--
[edited]@msn.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-p u r p l e ( NO SPACE )|--

Then you have little doubt left "6KJbvp1JGKY=" is for "purple"

If you Grep the file for "6KJbvp1JGKY="  anyone can quickly count how many times it appears: 16,092 times. 
In 30 seconds, you've discovered 16,000 accounts (passwords and emails)
The major issue with leaving the hints in clear is a house of cards effect: Not only it affects directly multiple accounts (One user will reveal the password of many),  but also can branch out far and wide: A house of cards AND a snowball effect, making it a perfect storm.
Someone may have used an unguessable hint, but it will be revealed anyway by the ECB encryption: Same key = Same password
  [edited]@yahoo.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-myspace password|--
 
 Even if  "[edited]@yahoo.com" did not reveal his password, "[edited]@shaw.ca" did it for him, and for 2 different accounts. you now have his Adobe account and his Myspace account too.

Having your Myspace or FB account hacked is not funny, but hey, you'll survive. Just tell your mom that's it's not you drunk-naked on the picture. Mention to your boss too that you never posted that his wife is an ugly fat cow.

Where it may hurt a bit more is when you leave a hint such as "Same as Amazon" You may have just given someone access to your Amazon account. Is there a Credit Card number associated with it?  

But hey, nobody is stupid enough to leave a hint such as this, right? 

[edited]=-|-amazonpass|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon pass|--
[edited]=-|-same as computer, same as amazon account|--
[edited]=-|-amazon account password is the same|--


And that goes on for hundreds of them....

So thanks a lot! Lemme order few things on Amazon... I always wanted a good GPU or two ( 2880 CUDA cores :) Coupled with JTR or Hashcat, It's going to be fun ... few million hash per second...
Plus, thanks to Adobe, you're paying ...

All you have to do is to sort the file by encryption key, and read a bit. Within minutes you'll have 1000's of accounts and within 2 hours, with a little grep, you'll get 1,341,000 accounts & passwords without a sweat. 

Knowing that 45-50% of people re-use their password on other sites, one could imagine the tally: 625,000 reusable passwords

So why Adobe, a company with a lot of resources, did such a bad job at protecting your account?  
The answer resides in the fact that it's cheaper and faster to have a lawyer releasing a carefully crafted PR statement rather than spending some money (and time) protecting your account. 

< Rant/ >

So, why is it bad? and what can YOU do to protect, not only your account, but also your bank account?  If you've read the PR release from Adobe, you'll have noticed that they *think* that no credit cards numbers were accessed in *clear*

The real scary part is that about 50% of the people re-use the same passwords again and again: A quick grep over "always" "identical" "same" and "usual" returns over 1 million hits. 
Then, sifting trough the hints, you find the scary ones:   "same email pass" "same as student loan" "same as email" "same Amazon"

And then comes the King of the Kings:  "same as bank" and "same as social". 
Ditto, hundreds of them! They are begging to be Pwned or financially raped.

So, dear Uber-Moron, thanks a lot for telling *in clear* where someone should hit you. 

Being able to access your email is already pretty scary:  Forget Pwning your Facebook account, Accessing your emails and looking for bank or loan info, etc. Then kicking you of your own email account and requesting a password change for your bank....

But you think that been owned and pwned that bad cannot happen to you?  Nope, Just take a look at Gawker, with his CEO using "24862486" as his password or this other CEO, of an Internet security company, mind you, getting so Pwned that he could not sit for weeks. 













5 Easy Way To Speed Up Your Mac

With time, your machine seems to be slower,  no?
Here is 5 easy way to improve performances and speed up the whole thing.

Foreword and warning:
-You could be tempted to use an app called MacKeeper.  Me, myself and I, DO NOT recommend at all the use of this... well, this thing.
Some call it MacKrapper, and I concur 100%.

- Backup your stuff.  Always.  Always backup your stuff.
For that,  there is Time Machine, or even better a Time Capsule.  I can not praise enough Time Machine, and when coupled with a Time Capsule, it's nothing short of orgasmic.  See under External HDD, I'll show you a fantastic way to backup your stuff and bullet proof your life.

This article has 2 sections:  The easy-quicky way,  and the deep cleaning


Easy-Quicky

Start Up Items
Yes, it's cool to have 5 apps opening at boot, but you are draining your system right from the start.
If you can avoid it, it's better.  Furthermore, you are unlikely to use 3 or 5 apps right from the start.
Also, take a look at your Menu bar: having 10 items up there does no good for you: You most likely will only use a few.
Go to System Preferences > Users and Groups > Login Items
Uncheck at will. I roughly uncheck everything but the critical.

Purge
A quick and very easy way to purge your RAM:  Open Terminal and just type "purge" , without the quotes you silly!  Don't forget to press enter! (#justsayin')
You need 10.7 + for purge


Widgets
Ditto, get rid of what you don't use.  Furthermore, if you really miss them, you can always re-install them in a click.


Add More RAM (memory)
Yes, it costs, but there is no secret!  Adding more RAM will greatly increase the performances of your machine, it's by far the most efficient fix
You do not need to buy your RAM from Apple, as they charge way too much!
This 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz  module cost less than $125, compared to the $300 - $400 charged by Apple.

Why: 
When your memory start to run low, your OS will "swap" electronic memory to "virtual" memory. Virtual memory is nothing less than Hard Drive space used as memory.  The issue is that the speed (Read/Write) of an Hard Drive compared to pure electronic memory is much slower... hence it simply takes more time and make your computer appears to be sluggish.

- If you do not know what type of memory you need, check under "About this Mac" > More Info > Memory
- If you do not know how to change the memory, follow this link
- Be aware that some iMac,  i.e 21.5 inches cannot have a memory upgrade 

- Pairing the memory:
☞  If you have only 2 slots, (i.e Mac Mini, most of Macbook, Macbook pro, Macbook air) you will have to change the memory completely: It is NOT recommended to add just one memory: You cannot have one 2 GB and one 4 GB.  Mixing memory modules only works if you have 4 memory slots.
If you have 2 memory slot, you'll have to change both and get the same size, i.e 2x4GB or 2x8GB
☞ If you have 4 memory slots, i.e iMac 27inches,   you can add more memory by pairing it correctly, hence you do NOT have to change all the memory modules
Example:  You already have 4GB, and want to upgrade to 24 GB by adding 16GB as  2x8 GB

(iMac is upright)
Slot 1 --> 4GB (Top)
Slot 2 --> 8 GB
Slot 3 --> 4GB
Slot 4 --> 8 GB (Bottom)


De-cluster
Easier said than done, but you probably have more junk on your hard drive than you would admit. I know, it's a tedious job that nobody wants to do, but it works ...
So here is an easy way to de-cluster: 

Get yourself a copy of:
- Trial version of the "Classic" Clean My Mac, not the new "Clean My Mac 2"
- Free copy of App Cleaner

Run the trial version of Clean My Mac, there is a limit of ~500MB
Be careful and read the preference pane.
As you can see, just Google Earth and Garmin account for 6GB of space.
Once you have reached the limit,  close the app and run App Cleaner on Clean My Mac and select ONLY the plist, delete the Plist, and re-start Clean My Mac















Automagically, you'll restart with a brand new trial version.
You can do the same by manually deleting the plist file located at: ~/Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.plist

Remove Un-used and obsolete Apps 
Now that you have App Cleaner, use it.  You can trash those apps that you have not used for the past 2 years.

Reboot
I have seen Macs with 60 days+ without a reboot
From time to time, it's a good idea to reboot: it takes 20 sec and will give your machine a breather, clears the swap and RAM  


Deep Cleaning

Once you've done all of the above,  let's go a little deeper ...
Repeat:  Adding RAM is what will make the most serious difference.  
Furthermore: As the upgrade for Mavericks is free, a lot of people have upgraded directly from 10.6.8 and then realized that their Mac got a little bit sluggish.  Well... RAM my friend! 10.6.8 was able to run on 1GB RAM, not so much for Mavericks! That's what 10.9 uses for a snack. 


Repair permissions
Go get yourself a free copy of Onyx and run it.
Be careful with Onyx, it's powerful... 








Once done, go take a look under "cleaning"  Use with caution, i.e "cookies"
always check the big offenders,  Firefox, Google Earth, etc are Cache Hogs.
Check also your logs, some people like to keep them, some don't. 
   











Unused Languages, part 2
Delete unused languages (Klingon, Uzbek, Telugu, Etc ) with Monolingual
Monolingual removes more languages than Clean My Mac
Proof?  628MB of languages removed after cleaning with Clean My Mac ...

DO NOT REMOVE ENGLISH! Some apps will only work with English.
Check carefully the languages that you remove! 









Deep De-Cluster

That's the most painful and tedious for me, so I took the easy solution:
 Get yourself an external HDD and bullet proof your Digital Life.   Here is how:
 
- You can find a 1TB External HDD USB 3  for less than $70 w/ free shipping. Get one!
- Get yourself a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (Donation-ware)
- Partition your HDD in 1,2 or 3 partitions if you want to. (With DiskUtility, it's very easy)

1) Carbon copy your HDD and transfer the copy to your external HDD 
- You have now a fail safe exact replica of your Mac OS, with everything, shall your Mac HDD fail, or you Mac altogether  AKA Starbucks accident! you can now boot with the USB (just hold the option key at boot) and have your life back.
You can also also boot on any Mac, if you have fried your Mac, you can use a second Mac, or even go to an Apple Store and explain the situation...

2) If you have selected a multiple partition, you can have a either a multiboot drive i.e OS X and Ubuntu or Windows
Or
3) A carbon copy of your present OS + another OS + a partition used as backup for your files and junk.

Now that you have everything backed up, let's go into the work ...

Big offenders

Get yourself a free copy of Disk Inventory X, install and run it
You'll get a picture of where your space went..
You can now move your big files to your External HDD, or zap' em
A quick check on my HDD revealed 24+ GB of old iMovies, junk etc ... now gone or saved elsewhere


















Mac Mail
If like me you've kept all your email since the birth of Jesus, you have a ton of junk.
It's time to trim the fat out of Mac Mail
- Sort by size and delete those funny videos that you have not watched for the last 3 years, etc ...
- Search for the word "unsubscribe" in your email: You'll find a zillion marketing emails that you don't care about.
Look for those pictures that are also in iPhoto, in Dropbox and also in your email: Yes, you have 3 copies...

Find Duplicates 
That's tedious, and takes a long time, but it may be worth it.
Always be cautious when removing duplicates! Thread lightly and always double check.

Dupe Guru is a "Fairware", without buying it, you can only remove 10 dupes at a time

Magician can also find dupes, it's free, but will ask for an email (?) it's an ok App, but only scans by folder (to compare).  I make no warranty whatsoever about Magician. It does also other stuff and feel like an "Everything on you plate" kinda menu.  I mean that they serve you the ice-cream on top of your steak.

MacKeeper  I'd rather burn my Mac than install that crapware. It's App Porn.  They have a bad, bad, bad karma.  If you wish to spend money, then do it properly, for a good App:  Araxis has a 7 days trial.

Finder anyone? 
Finder has a little "+" button,  often overlooked.
Once you click it, you'll find a zillion ways to search for specifics. It goes as far as finding pictures taken with the flash "on" with a specific aperture.

Defragmenter
Without going too deep into the intricate details of OS X, you do NOT need to defragment OS X.  "When writing files, Mac OS X optimizes your disk space and avoids fragmenting large files into smaller segments"
That's it.  Buying a defragmenter for Mac is money down the drain.
Also, if you have an SSD, (Solid State Drive) defragmenting is NOT recommended at all. Don't do it.