1. Why are passwords important? I connect to the Internet only occasionally, so passwords aren’t a big deal, right?
In a word, wrong. But, don’t feel bad. Passwords are one of the most neglected and misunderstood forms of security.
In fact, passwords are vital and necessary for every Linux machine (networked or not) because they provide the last line of defense against intrusion. For example, if you’re using a firewall or packet-filtering software (such as ipchains or ipfwadm) but don’t use passwords, and someone breaches your system, you have no secondary line of defense.
A password is a carefully chosen word, phrase, or sequence of alphanumeric characters that a user provides to validate his (or her) identity. The best password is a true randomly-generated sequence of characters, but randomly-generated passwords tend to be difficult to remember. The harder a password is to remember, the more likely you are to forget it or write it down. The former is bad, but the latter is much worse! Never write down or share your password with anyone.
If you’re like most people, you’ll want to create a password using a word or phrase that is meaningful to you. So, the problem becomes how to choose a meaningful password that can’t be guessed easily. Unfortunately, the easiest words for you to remember — your girlfriend’s name, your husband’s favorite color, your pets’ names, nicknames, birthdays, or the last four digits of your social security number — are also the…
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