In a world where refrigerators are internet-enabled and billions of people each have numerous accounts, there’s no shortage of targets for cybercriminals. In the early days of the internet, cybersecurity was often just an afterthought. For example, in 2009 there was a massive password breach of over 32 million RockYou accounts (they developed many MySpace applications) . After analyzing the data from the breach, Imperva (an IT security company) discovered the following:
“... nearly 1 percent of the 32 million people it studied had used '123456” as a password. The second-most-popular password was “12345.” Others in the top 20 included “qwerty,” “abc123” and “princess.” … about 20 percent of people on the RockYou list picked from the same, relatively small pool of 5,000 passwords.”
Anyone with a bit of know-how can take off-the-shelf tools and gain unauthorized access to your account. Want to know if any of your account information was breached? Enter your email address at https://haveibeenpwned.com/. There’s a good chance that your email address and password have been exposed in at least one breach. If you’re like me, your email has been exposed 15 times.
Why does this all matter? It may be easier than you think for your accounts to be hacked. If we’re talking about your last.fm account, it may not be a big deal. But, your Gods Unchained account is worth keeping secure.
Best security practices
I find that the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) offers great information for cybersecurity. They have some for creating and managing passwords, which I’ll discuss below:
Use a strong password on your accounts
Well, what is a strong password? What’s considered a strong password has changed over the years, but the best practice today is to use a passphrase. Passphrases are easy for humans to type and remember but incredibly difficult for computers to crack. My go-to passphrase generation method is the Diceware method, you can read about it here.
For example, “chewy-blob-flavoring-ritzy-spotted” would be a strong password. If you wanted to make it even stronger, you could insert numbers into the words, add capitalization, and/or a word not found in a dictionary and end up with “chewy-blob-fla4voring-castlevania-Spotted”. (It should go without saying that you shouldn't use either of these passwords 😉)
So now you have a strong password, but what if the company you store the password at is breached?
Don’t use the same password on any of your accounts
If you use a unique password for every account, it’s much easier to change your password for any account that is breached. More importantly, anyone with your account information won’t be able to access your other accounts.
But how do you remember a password for each and every account?
Use a password manager
A password manager is like a safe that holds all of your passwords. In other words, one password can be used to access all of your passwords. What’s great is that modern password managers like Bitwarden and LastPass integrate nicely with your computer, mobile devices, and browsers. So, in most cases, you won’t have to type your username and passwords once you’ve set them up.
Often people will say, “If someone has your password manager password, then they have access to everything”! There’s truth to that statement, but as long as you use a strong unique password, you should be secure. However, if you still can’t sleep at night, there’s one last step you can take to cover yourself.
Use multi-factor authentication
You’re probably familiar with multi-factor authentication if you have a google account, steam account, or if you’ve ever had to input a verification code from an e-mail you received. If all else fails, multi-factor authentication can still protect your account.
This is a feature that Gods Unchained is currently missing. However, I’m hoping they implement some form of multi-factor authentication- SMS text at the very least, but a mobile app or Yubikey integration would be great. With how much of an investment some players will have in this game, having more options for security will be a great benefit to the game.
In conclusion...
I hope this post helps people to secure their accounts better. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts, questions, or what security features they'd like to see in Gods Unchained. Until next time, folks!
