User accounts and passwords
All of your Anything you save. It could be a document, a piece of music, a collection of data or something else., A place to store files that are related, eg. all of the files relating to one project. Folders help to keep work organised. Sometimes called a directory. and Sequences of instructions for a computer. are stored in your A collection of settings, and often files, that relate to just one user. A password is normally needed to gain access.. You can To make a file secure by forcing a user to enter a password before it can be opened. your user account to prevent other people from accessing its contents. Your username is commonly based on your name and you usually get to choose your own password.
To access your user account, enter your username and password into the A display asking a user to enter a username and/or password in order to gain access to the system.. Sometimes the username is selectable or entered for you, especially if you were the last user to login to the machine.
Passwords can be set to expire, at which point you will be forced to choose a new one. This is a security feature. Always choose a password that’s difficult for someone else to guess.
Choosing a password
A strong password is:
- at least eight characters long
- a mixture of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters and other symbols, eg !@#£$
- not a real word
- impossible to guess
A weak password might be:
- the word ‘password’
- your favourite colour/favourite football team/pet’s name
- a single letter
Stealing a password
The word ‘cracking’ is used to describe the process of obtaining a password by force. A person who tries to gain unauthorised access to a computer. use programs that use brute force and dictionary attacks to crack passwords.
- A brute force attack tries every combination of letters, numbers and symbols until it identifies the password.
- A dictionary attack behaves in the same way but uses a list of words instead.
Do not write your passwords down and use a different password for each of your accounts. If you use the same password, a hacker that gains access to one of your accounts will have access to all of them.
