Review of "Just make it HackMe"

For this blog assignment I decided to critique the article "Just Hack Me" written by Ashlee Vance for the New York Times. The article focuses on the underestimation that we put on passwords as users, that many different users all seemed to use the same password in a recent study.

The articles main source of information comes from the site Impera. Impera contains information on the case that involves a hacking of a large number of user names and passwords on RockYou.com. After RockYou was compromised, Impera reviewed over 32 million passwords and complied the passwords in to most common used, which included password, 123456, and 123abc, but who's passwords where they.

The site RockYou is a software creator for sites like facebook or myspace. It provides its user with add-ons including slide shows, picture management and everything you would need to make your profile aesthetically friendly. Who would used this sort of software? I do not see this site as a priority for a strong password, nor do I see that anyone using it would have anything to be stolen as probably most of the users are 12-18 year old girls, looking to make something cute for there pages.

So if the data that is collect are the used passwords from 12-18 year old girls, how well is the article representing the amount of our population that use passwords to protect bank accounts or stock exchanges. I feel that the article scrutinizes the rest of society because of the misrepresented data provided.

I do feel that the article had very good content, as I agree that some people do not take their passwords seriously. They don't understand how easily it is to steal someones identity until its too late. The article also does a good job at finding explanatory quotes from seemingly reliable sources, but the quotes do seem to overload the topic.

The article is very un-balanced and unfair because of the misrepresented data, and the extreme use that is put on it. If the writer would have found more data proving his point, then I feel that the article would have drastically improved its worth to us readers.


“If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe”, written by Ashlee Vance. It was published on the New York Times' website on January 20, 2010.