How many times do people have to be told to use smart passwords, and avoid the obvious ones that makes you easy pickings for hackers?
Easy-to-remember numerical sequences such as “1234” and “password” are big no-no’s in the world of security. But someone failed to pass that information onto North Korea, whose imitation Facebook page got hacked by a Scottish teenager, faster than you can say “Awa’ an bile yer heid” (“Away and boil your head.”).
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The website was hacked by 18-year-old Andrew McKean, not long after being outed by Internet performance tracker Dyn Research, according to the London Telegraph. The teenager made fast work of it after discovering the website was using “admin” for an ID and “password” for the, well, password. He got control of the site, which was offline by Tuesday:
North Korea launches globally accessible Facebook clone (hosted in North Korea!) https://t.co/EbwSH8Zzc9 pic.twitter.com/WotGVKWTAc
— Dyn Research (@DynResearch) May 27, 2016
Password management firm SplashData came out with a list of last year’s worst passwords, with “123456” and “password” at the top, followed by “12345678” and “qwerty.”
Most North Koreans aren’t in danger of being hacked by anyone as the country restricts usage for its citizens. Taking a look at North Korea’s Internet access in 2014, CNN reported that traffic is mostly routed through China, and it’s equivalent to about 1,000 high-speed homes in the U.S.
Many North Koreans may not even be aware it exists.
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More than likely, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un isn’t among them and probably was hooked up to see the Internet trolling a portrait that he released via the North Korean State Department.
This article was originally published on Marketwach.
