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East Oregonian
How to elude Russian
hackers with decent
password security
By MAE ANDERSON
AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK — Details
from the Department of
Justice indictment of Russian
hackers on Wednesday show
that many people are still not
taking routine precautions
to safeguard their email
accounts — and hackers are
exploiting that.
The Russian hackers
didn’t have to work very
hard to break into people’s
email accounts, even those
belonging to government offi-
cials or powerful executives.
Here’s a look at a few simple
ways to help safeguard your
email account from hackers.
DON’T REUSE PASS-
WORDS: Many online
break-ins result when people
have reused a password
across, say, their email, social
and financial accounts. If it’s
compromised at any one of
those services, the others are
suddenly vulnerable.
One simple way to avoid
this problem is to start with
a base password you can
remember, and then add on
letters and numbers that refer-
ence where you’re using it. If
your base password is “great-
surfer2017” (which isn’t
particularly secure; more on
that in a moment), you could
make
“greatsurfer2017Y”
your Yahoo password, and
“greatsurfer2017G”
your
Google password.
If you can’t be bothered to
do more, this is a base level of
security that can help shield
you from the most obvious
threats. But it’s still only a
baby step.
PICK A STRONGER
PASSWORD: You can make
things harder for attackers by
making your base password
stronger. The more compli-
cated and lengthy a password
is, the harder it will be for
hackers to guess.
The downside: Tougher
passwords are also harder
to remember. But there are
some ways around that.
Don’t include your kids’
names, birthdays or refer-
ences to any other personal
details. Hackers routinely
troll Facebook and Twitter
for clues to passwords like
these. Obvious and default
passwords such as “Pass-
word123” are also bad, as are
words commonly found in
dictionaries, as these are used
in programs hackers have to
automate guesses.
You can make your
own
strong
passwords
with randomly capitalized
nonsense words interspersed
with numbers and characters
— like, say, “giLLy31!florp.”
(Just don’t use that one now
that it’s appeared in this story.)
So long as you’re making up
the words yourself, these
are difficult for hackers to
crack — and they’re easier
to remember than you might
think, though you might want
to practice them a few times.
HAVE YOUR PASS-
WORDS MANAGED FOR
YOU: Of course, you can
make things easier on yourself
by using a password-manager
service such as LastPass or
DashLane, which keep track
of multiple complex pass-
words for you. Some web
browsers such as Apple’s
Safari and Google’s Chrome
also have built-in password
managers; these work if you
switch devices, but not if you
switch browsers.
After you create a strong
password for your password
manager, it can create
random passwords for your
other accounts — and will
remember them for you as
well.
“It’s more secure and it
makes your life easier,” said
Jamie Winterton, director of
strategy at the Global Secu-
rity Initiative at Arizona State
University.
M U LT I FA C T O R
AUTHENTICATION IS
A MUST: The next line of
defense is two- or multifactor
authentication, which asks
users to enter a second form
of identification, such as a
code texted to their phone,
when they log in. It’s now
commonplace for many
email and social media
accounts. That way, even if
hackers manage to get your
password they still need your
phone with the texted code.
“Having another way for
that account to say ‘Hey,
is that really you?’, and
give veto authority is really
important,” Winterton said.
K E Y W O R D S
MATTER: According to
the indictment, the Russian
hackers searched email
accounts for keywords like
“passwords” to find people’s
passwords for other accounts.
They also searched for
“credit card” ‘’visa,” among
other terms. So think twice
before you use common key
words that can serve as a road
map to sensitive information
for hackers. And don’t save
passwords in old emails.
“There’s not one single
thing out there that can
keep you perfectly safe,”
Winterton said. “But there
are a lot of different things
out there that can keep you
almost perfectly safe.”
White House resists pressure,
stands by wiretap claim
WASHINGTON
(AP)
— The White House on
Thursday stood by President
Donald Trump’s unproven
accusations that his prede-
cessor wiretapped his New
York skyscraper, despite
growing bipartisan agree-
ment that there’s no evidence
to back up the claim and
mounting pressure to retract
the statement.
Angrily defending the
president’s statement, White
House spokesman Sean
Spicer told reporters Trump
“stands by” the four tweets
that sparked a firestorm that
has threatened Trump’s credi-
bility with lawmakers. Spicer
denounced reporters for
taking the president’s words
too literally and suggested
lawmakers were basing their
assessments on incomplete
information.
Spicer’s
comments
were a rebuttal to the top
two members of the Senate
intelligence committee, who
released a statement earlier
Thursday declaring there
is no indication that Trump
Tower was “the subject of
surveillance” by the U.S.
government before or after
the 2016 election. Spicer
suggested the statement from
Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C.,
and Mark Warner, D-Va., was
made without a full review of
the evidence or, incorrectly,
a briefing from the Justice
Department.
“They are not findings,”
he said.
The standoff between the
White House and lawmakers
came four days before FBI
Director James Comey
is slated to testify before
Congress, when he will
inevitably be asked whether
the president’s accusations
are accurate. The White
House’s refusal to back down
raised the stakes for Comey’s
appearance before the intelli-
gence committee on Monday.
Trump tweeted earlier
this month that President
Barack Obama “was tapping
my phones in October”
and compared the incident
to “Nixon/Watergate” and
“McCarthyism.”
Trump, in an interview
Wednesday with Fox News,
said he’d learned about the
alleged wiretapping from
news reports referencing
intercepted
communica-
tions, despite the fact that
he and his advisers have
publicly denounced stories
about government agencies
reviewing contacts between
Trump
associates
and
Russians.
Trump said there would be
“some very interesting items
coming to the forefront over
the next two weeks.”
In the two weeks since the
tweets, the White House has
tried to soften the statement,
but not disavowed it.
Spicer on Thursday
asserted that Trump meant
to broadly refer to “surveil-
lance,” rather than a phone
wiretap.
“The president’s already
been very clear that he didn’t
mean specifically wiretap-
ping,” he said.
Friday, March 17, 2017
NATION/WORLD
U.S. soldiers train for jungle warfare in Hawaii
HONOLULU (AP) —
The U.S. Army soldiers
finished wading across a
stream in a rainforest in
Hawaii, and they were
soaked. Their boots and
socks were water-logged
and their clothes, hair and
ears were caked with mud.
The soldiers were going
through training at the first
jungle school the Army has
established in decades. The
course is part of a program to
train soldiers for exercises and
potential combat on terrain
that looks more like islands
and nations in the Pacific
than arid Afghanistan and the
deserts of the Middle East.
Brig.
Gen.
Stephen
Michael, deputy commander
of the 25th Infantry Division,
said the Army set up the
school as its footprint was
shrinking in Iraq and Afghan-
istan after more than a decade
of war in those countries.
“The jungle school gives
us that focus, it reinforces
AP Photo/Daniel Lin
A soldier from the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division
1 crosses a stream with a rope during jungle warfare
training at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
that we’re in the Pacific,”
Michael said. “If you’re in
the 25th, you understand
you got to fight in the tough
environment of the Pacific.”
Ever since the turn of
the 20th century, the Army
has fought in tropical rain-
forests. It spent years, for
example, battling Filipino
insurgents after the 1898
Spanish-American War. The
Vietnam War was fought in
the jungle.
The Army gave up its
jungle training school in
Panama in 1999 when the
U.S. returned land there to
the Panamanian govern-
ment. Then jungle training
lost priority in the aftermath
of the Sept. 11 attacks as the
Army focused on preparing
soldiers to fight in Afghani-
stan and Iraq.
Now, surviving and
fighting in tropical rainfor-
ests has captured the Army’s
interest again. In 2013, it set
up a jungle school at Scho-
field Barracks, a sprawling
Army post some 30 miles
west of the soft sands of
Waikiki. Its dense woods
have a stream soldiers can
practice crossing and cliffs
for rappelling.
First it needed instruc-
tors. The Army sent soldiers
to military jungle schools
in Brazil, Brunei and other
tropical spots to reacquire
long-lost skills. Instructors-
in-training poured over old
Army jungle manuals.
“We had to relearn
everything,” said Staff Sgt.
Ascencion Lopez, who was
one of the first instructors at
the school, which is part of
the 25th Infantry Division’s
Lightning Academy.
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