My Academic Journey

In summary, current alternatives to passwords are not seemed to solve security problem and to replace passwords in near future. For instance, graphical passwords do suffer from the same security threats as text passwords. However, the most common problem of alternative authentication approaches is low deployability. There are a number of devices that cannot support biometrical authentication such as stationary desktops without webcam and other equipment, except a keyboard and a mouse. The most effective way of authentication may be developed by combination of different approaches of authentication and introducing two and three step verifications, but ultimately passwords are here to stay.

The most popular authentication technique is entering a user name with a password However, majority of passwords are weak: easy to remember, thus, easier for dictionary and rainbow table attacks, since they consist of words and not of random symbols (Evans, 2018) . Nonetheless, passwords have a list of advantages: they do not require a physical token; they are easy to learn, it is easy to understand how passwords work; and can be used on all platforms. Main disadvantages of passwords are: memorising effort, threat of physical observation, threat of phishing, threat of dictionary or rainbow table attacks (Bonneau et al. , 2012) .   There are three main approaches to authentication: to use the information user keeps in memory, for example password, pass phrase; to use a physical object, for instance plastic card, mobile phone; to use user’s behaviour or biometrical data, such as fingerprint, face scanning. However, such approaches are only more secure if they are combined together (...

  Introduction The common belief is that passwords have become the weakest spot in modern security chain (Febrache, 2016) . Several years of research concluded that passwords have essential security problems and may frustrate a considerable number of users (Bonneau et al. , 2012) . The aim of this essay is to review existing authentication techniques, evaluate their main differences and demonstrate the importance of password authentication in the near future. Reference: Febrache, D. (2016) ‘Passwords are broken – the future shape of biometrics’, Biometric Technology Today , 2016(3), pp. 5–7. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969476516300492 (Accessed: 27 October 2021). Bonneau, J. et al. (2012) ‘The Quest to Replace Passwords: A Framework for Comparative Evaluation of Web Authentication Schemes’, in. 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy , San Francisco, CA, USA: IEEE. doi:10.1109/SP.2012.44.

 I have decided to develop the topic of my major project theme  - what is an ideal password - and to cover the more specific topic in my continuous assessment essay. The topic of the essay is going to be the future of passwords. The topics covered will be: current techniques of authentification, disadvantages of current methods and new approaches developing. More precise information will be given in the essay introduction post later.  I started my research on the topic and now I am gathering information for the research. Furthermore, I have also covered such an activity in my project plan .

In this post I want to research and investigate the case when I personally experienced phishing attack and lost my password and the whole account for 3 hours. Vkontakte – vk.com – is one of the most popular social networks in Russian-speaking countries such as Belarus – where I am from, Ukraine, Russia. It is the analogue to Facebook for Russian-speaking community. All my friends from my home country have accounts on vk. And this year I and a lot of my acquaintances experienced phishing attack on that social network which I want to describe and research in this post. (Bullfrag, 2015) What is a phishing attack? Phishing attack – a kind of social engineering attack when attackers send messages disguised as messages from a trustworthy source to a victim in order to steal private data or install malicious software on the victim’s hardware (NCSC, 2018). The world is now experiencing the uprising of the cyber-attacks due to the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of phishing attacks can ...

The Link to my project management gannt chart on google docs

The table is available on the link: Major Project Plan

Every person has heard about how important it is to have a well-built strong password. An essential number of people would agree that password hygiene is as important as the personal hygiene is, since violation of first may lead to much more serious consequences. However, the statistics show that 59% of users use their names and dates of birth as their passwords, 43% shared their passwords with other people and only 45% would change a password after a breach (O’Driscoll, 2020). The aim of this post is to show how to create strong passwords. It is necessary to know how passwords are cracked in order to properly understand what password can be referred as strong one. There are to ways to execute an attack: online and offline.  Online attack is done by trying different passwords one by one through a normal log in process. Usually, such attacks are unsuccessful since they are easy to detect and block if necessary (Burnett and Kleiman, 2006).  I think everybody encountered situatio...

I have read a book "Cybersecurity: What You Need to Know About Computer and Cyber Security, Social Engineering, The Internet of Things + An Essential Guide to Ethical Hacking for Beginners" by Lester Evans previous week and got interested in the using of social engineering for doing attacks such as brute force attack and dictionary attack. This post describes this area and is based on the book I read.                                                                                           (Evans, 2018)                                                        ...

 I've been thinking about the topics I can choose for my Major project and found out that there is a topic I am interested in for quite a long time. I want to describe my idea here. I have an idea to make a research in Linux security and find out how it differs from windows. A lot of people I am communicating with told me that Linux is used all around the world in security area. I want to find out why, understand the general idea of Linux and try to find the information about its weak points .   I hope that during my first steps in this research I will find some more narrow and specific problems which I can make my project about Linux is an open source operating system which means that all users can see not only its code but also modify it. It is considered to be a major advantage of an open-source system because the more people can observe the code, the more chance to spot the weaknesses before it is exploited appears. Also it gives a lot of space for other developers for ...

 Hello! In this post I want to tell about my current software skills and plans for the future. I started my IT journey from Paint . At the age of 4 when I wasn't able to read I could spend hours just sitting and drawing some shapes on the screen. It seemed to me as such a powerful tool.  Then I started my school. Schools in Belarus don't require any IT skills. Some children can even see the mouse for first time at the age of 14. But I was lucky because I had a really cool English teacher who encouraged us to create something like small projects on the topic that we had during class. I always wanted to create something specific, therefore, I started to use computer for my projects. I learned Microsoft Office quite good. I got interested in programming at the age of 12 and I learned Pascal ABC. Then I got a bit of knowledge in Java, Python, C++. Also I have some skills in using linux . I tried myself in 3d max ,  I know a little of photoshop and I am able to create small ...

 Hello! In the previous post I started introducing myself and here I want to give you more information. I was born in Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus , in 2003. My father was always very busy at work and my mum didn't always have time for me. Nevertheless, I was a really curious child and I found myself a new really interesting friend I could always spend my free time with - Computer (I am glad my family had one). I still remember how long I had to wait looking at the windows XP emblem in front of me (Computer was quite old and demanded a lot of time to start). Nevertheless, I started my It journey there - in front of my first computer. I've completed the Lyceum of Belarusian National Technical university and got a solid foundation in mathematics and physics . I always took part in different competitions and tried to engage everywhere. I have some experience in research works and once I had published an article in one small Belarusian scientific journal. My fir...

 Hello everyone! Welcome to My Academic Journey which I've started here, in DMU! My name is Ilya and I am from Belarus - one of the most unknown countries in the Eastern Europe (At least until 2020). I studied mathematics and information technology in a usual Belarusian school but I didn't got my first knowledge there. I got my first computer at the age when I even wasn't able to read! I remember sitting in front of the screen playing some game and wondering what did all those symbols mean :) And now I am here, in DMU. Leicester is located in the centre of the UK - the country I have always watched movies and read books about. I am very proud to be here and to have the opportunity to study the subjects I really like since my childhood. This is my first post and I hope it encourages to check the other ones (Coming soon). I am planning to do a really good work and post there all the most interesting and useful!