The network password was a key plot point in one of the most famous movies of all time

PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the weekly column where we turn a white hot spotlight onto the cracks and crevices in company security and write about those who have let their guard down, often in the name of convenience, incompetence, or just plain laziness. Today’s tale of woe concerns the need to secure a network and the dangers of an insecure password. Our story comes courtesy of Roger Grimes, CISO advisor at security firm KnowBe4. He recounts a time when he had to get into a client’s network but didn’t have the credentials. Grimes was installing accounting software for a client and, as a result, needed to take the network down for a day. To make sure that he didn’t disturb any work, he decided to log into the system on a Saturday. Unfortunately, he was missing the admin password he needed to uninstall old software and add the new app. Since it was the weekend, no one was answering their work phones to give him the information he needed, and there was a good chance he would have to delay the upgrade until the following weekend. Grimes could have given up right there, but he had an idea. Why not try to figure out what the password was? The situation reminded him of a movie. “You know, the scene where the hacker is sitting at the terminal trying to log on, but the victim refuses to give up credentials. So the hacker starts typing random passwords out of thin air,” he said. “And wouldn’t you know it? They correctly guess the password at the last possible moment.” After trying numerous passwords, the advisor thought about a famous movie he had just watched: Citizen Kane. He decided to try “rosebud,” and voilà. (This vulture can identify with the Orson Welles focus, having just watched The Third Man this week.) It’s a good thing that it was Grimes, a legit contractor, guessing passwords instead of some miscreant. Picking a password from a movie plotline is a bad idea and, in this case, made even worse by the lack of numbers, capital letters, or symbols in the password. If you’re picking out a password, you might be better off generating a strong password that’s a string of random numbers and letters and then having it remembered by a password manager. Then, for the password manager itself, consider a passphrase that contains capital letters, symbols, and numbers such as “Shoe-Please6-Wrapped-Carbon-Wear” so you can try to remember it. You might also use a passphrase for your admin password – you can generate a random one using Keeper’s Passphrase Generator. Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at pwned@sitpub.com. Anonymity available upon request. ®