Windows 10: Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords

Cluster Head · May 24, 2016

Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords
117M leaked creds (from LinkedIn?). New best practices + #AzureAD and MSA can help

Howdy folks,

You probably saw the news last week that a hacker was selling a list with 117M usernames and passwords purportedly leaked from LinkedIn. With these kinds of leaks happening almost weekly now, what can a person do to protect themselves? Or if you are an IT admin, what can you do to protect your users accounts?

Based on the latest research, there are some straight forward, concrete steps you can take as a user or as an administrator to help protect your accounts. And we’ve got some great features in #AzureAD and the Microsoft Account service that can help you as well.

I’ve asked Robyn Hicock and Alex Weinert from our Identity Protection team to walk you through these steps. Robyn has done a really great white paper reviewing the latest best practices in password security and Alex has written up a nice blog post showing you how Azure AD and the Microsoft Account service can help. You’ll find Alex’s blog post and links to Robyn’s whitepaper below.

I hope you’ll take the time to read them both. They are both interesting and some of Robyn’s findings will probably surprise you!

Best Regards,

Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons)

Director of Program Management

Microsoft Identity Division

——————–

Hello everyone!

Alex Weinert, Group Program Manager of Azure AD Identity Protection team here again. Hot on the heels of my blog explaining our approach to lists of compromised credentials and sharing the results data, last week we had another another big list in the news, this time a set of 117M purportedly leaked from LinkedIn.

With all these lists leaking, what can you do to stay safe?

To start with, I’d recommend you read this great whitepaper that Robyn Hicock, a Program Manager on our team just published online. It highlights a bunch of very cool research and gives some great guidance on improving the security of passwords.

The paper draws on some great work done by the folks in Microsoft Research, our data and learnings from 10+ years of defending the Microsoft Account service from attacks and information across the industry.

I think it will change the way you think about your password policies. For example, did you know that in the real world all of these common approaches:

•Password length requirements
•Password “complexity” requirements
•Regular, periodic password expiration

actually make passwords easier to crack? Why you might ask? Because humans act in pretty predictable ways when faced with these kinds of requirements. You can learn all about it in Robyn’s paper.

In addition to Robyn’s paper, I want to share a few insights into how Azure AD and the Microsoft Account system work to protect you and your passwords. We do this in two innovative ways based on the best practice outlined in Robyn’s paper:
•Dynamically banning common passwords
•Smart password lockout

Read on to learn more about these approaches and how we use them in Azure AD and the Microsoft Account System.

Dynamically Banned Passwords

As Robyn’s paper explains, the most important thing to keep in mind when selecting a password is to choose one that is unique, and therefore hard to guess. We help you do this in the Microsoft Account and Azure AD system by dynamically banning commonly used passwords.

When it comes to big breach lists, cybercriminals and the Azure AD Identity Protection team have something in common – we both analyze the passwords that are being used most commonly. Bad guys use this data to inform their attacks – whether building a rainbow table or trying to brute force accounts by trying popular passwords against them. What *we* do with the data is prevent you from having a password anywhere near the current attack list, so those attacks won’t work.

As I mentioned in my last blog and the latest Microsoft Security Incident Report, we see more than 10M accounts attacked daily, so we have a lot of data about which passwords are in play in those attacks. We use this data to maintain a dynamically updated banned password list.

We then use that list to prevent you from selecting a commonly used password or one that is similar. This service is already live in the Microsoft Account Service and in private preview in Azure AD. Over the next few months we will roll it out across all 10m+ Azure AD tenants.

Here’s what it looks like to an end user in Azure AD (currently in private preview – coming soon!):

And here’s what it looks like on your Microsoft account (Outlook, Xbox, OneDrive…):

Smart Password Lockout

Of course, you already know that when our security system detects a bad guy trying to guess your password online, we will lock out the account. What you probably don’t know is that we do lots of work to make sure that they only lock themselves out!

Our systems are designed for determining the risk associated with a specific login session. Using this, we can apply lockout semantics only to the folks who aren’t you. The only way *you* get locked out is if someone is guessing your passwords on your own machine or network.

If you are locked out in Azure AD, it looks like this:

And in Microsoft account, it looks like this:

To see how effective this is at saving good users from disruption, check this out – more than half the time, we keep hackers from disrupting you or your users:

Click to expand...

Microsoft Password Guidance
Download pdf: Password Guidance - Microsoft Research

Source: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...-msa-can-help/

BunnyJ · May 24, 2016

Thanks.. I bet that 12345678 or some form of that is the most used. I want to see that list.

:)

Yolvi Ell · May 24, 2016

change wifi password

Hi Barbara,

A wireless router's password can be changed through the router's configuration webpage. Follow these steps to change it:

Click Start.

Go to Settings.

Click Network & Internet.

Click Wi-Fi.

Select your Wi-Fi network and look for the IPv4 address. Routers commonly use 192.168.1.1, but it depends on your router, so it's important to check.

Launch a web browser like Microsoft Edge and type the IP address in the address bar.

You'll be prompted for a username and a password. The most common default username is
admin and the most common default password is password, or there may not be a password at all and you can leave it blank. If this doesn't work, consult the manual for your router or contact the device manufacturer.

Once you're successfully logged in, find the wireless settings area and change the password.

Let us know if you were able to change the Wi-Fi password after following these steps.

----

If you think this was useful, you may "mark it as an answer" to help those who are facing the same problem.

Rotozaza · May 24, 2016

Enlarge list of Most Used or add manually

It was so convenient have manually added and recently used programs, all showing latest fiels or config used.

Now this is reduced to 5 moste used, far not enough, especially as tile didn't show recent files.

Of course pin to taskbar would do the job, but this list can get far to long when there are many open apps.

How can list of 'Most used' apps enlarged to 10?

Thanks for directions.

Windows 10: Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords

Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords

Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords

Microsoft is building a list of most commonly used & leaked passwords

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