Passwords, a perennial problem

People still don’t take passwords seriously even though they are the first line of defence against cybercriminals. — 123rf.com

Even in the 18th century folk-tale of Ali Baba, the forty thieves used a simple password like “open sesame” to guard their treasure vault. However, even then Ali Baba managed to “hack” his way in!

Such a password would be of little help today. A check on password strength analyser, Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), revealed that the password “opensesame” has been exposed 25,334 times in data breaches.