GE ELECT 3 – Living in the IT Era – 1 st semester

AY 2023 – 2024

Computer Safety
and
Security Literacy

LENI GIRLIE M. IDIAN

Instructor
Authentication Process

 is the process of proving one’s right

to assume this identity.

 Access is granted to an account if

one can respond with the correct
username and password when
challenged by a login screen
Passwords Threats
 Many threats passwords face, so one
should pay close attention to which of
these threats are mitigated by password
strength and which are mitigated by
password secrecy.
 A strong password is chosen in such a
way that neither a human nor a computer
would be likely to successfully guess the
password in any reasonable amount of
time.
Common Passwords Threats
 Bob Discloses Password
 Social Engineering
 Key-Logging

 Wireless Sniffing
 Attacker Guesses Password
 Exposed Password File
 Security Questions
 Stop Attacking My Password
Passwords Security
 Passwords are an inescapable part of our digital
lives. While there are many technologies that seek to
replace the common password, it is unlikely that any
of these alternative solutions will supplant
passwords any time in the near future.
 The objective of creating a strong password is to
prevent against many types of guessing attacks like
brute-force or dictionary attacks. Before the
construct of a strong password is discussed, keep in
mind that a password must also be familiar and
remembered easily enough to be recalled and typed
accurately at a later time.
 Creating strong passwords
 Choosing a password is a pragmatic process, and
an optimal solution does not exist for creating a
password that is easy to recall when needed but
strong enough that it cannot be easily guessed or
cracked.

 Suggestions for generating a strong password:

 Composition
 Substitution
 Acronyms
 Phonetic Replacement
 Encapsulation
 Length
 Passphrase
 How to choose strong passwords:

 Do not use trivial passwords.

 Do not use a password from an example of
how to choose passwords.
 Do not create a password based on easily
guessable personal information.
 Do not base a password solely on a dictionary
word (in any language), popular phrase, or
acronym.
 Do not use keyboard patterns or a series of
sequential numbers.
 Email Security
INTRODUCTION:
 Email is one of the most common Internet
applications and is widely used for both business
and personal communications. As email has
become an integral part of our daily lives, it has
also given attackers a means to easily target and
contact many potential victims, often by sending
emails pretending to be someone they are not.
Email Systems
 Email is one of the earliest network applications and
one of the first to gain widespread use on the Internet.
In comparison to the present day, early email systems
were initially simple programs that restricted users to
the options of creating, sending, and reading short text
messages without supporting file attachments—much
like modern-day text messaging. Furthermore, early
email systems were proprietary and generally did not
communicate well with each other. As the popularity of
email grew and the demand for functionality and
interoperability increased, the email system evolved
into the familiar systems of today.
• Two Primary components of contemporary
email systems:

1. Message Transfer Agent

 Massage transfer agent or MTA designed to store

and transport email messages across the Internet
and the User Agent (UA) that enables users to
manage email messages.
 The sending of an email is also very similar to
putting a letter in a mailbox. As in the postal
system, outbound email is not authenticated,
meaning that one does not need to supply a
username and password to send an email from an
MTA.
2. User Agents

 Another major component of an email system is the

User Agent (UA), whose function is to support
interaction between the user and the MTAs. The UA is
generally the most familiar aspect of the email system
for people since its capabilities are visible to the user.
The UA controls access to each individual user’s email
account and allows one to create, read, send, and
generally manage email messages.
 Using a dedicated application-based UA like Microsoft
Outlook (or Outlook Express) is similar to having mail
delivered directly to your home. To access email from
such a system, each user must authenticate to the
email service provider MTA to retrieve the user’s
emails to their desktop computing environment.
• Common threats faced when using email and
best practices that can be used to minimize
such threats.

1. Eavesdropping
2. Spam and Phishing
3. Spoofing
4. Malicious Email Attachments
5. Replying and Forwarding
6. To, Carbon Copy, and Blind Carbon Copy
 THANK
YOU AND
GOD