单选题 At this time of the year, your correspondent crosses the Pacific to Japan for a month or so. He repeats the trip during the summer. He considers it crucial in order to keep abreast of all the ingenious technology which, once debugged by the world's most acquisitive consumers, will wind up in American and European shops a year or two later.
Each time he packs his bags, though, he is embarrassed by having to include a dog-eared set of notes that really ought to be locked up in a safe. This is his list of togons and passwords for all the websites he uses for doing business and staying in touch with the rest of the world. At the last count, the inch-thick list accumulated over the past decade or so — your correspondent's sole copy — includes access details for no fewer than 174 online services and computer networks.
He admits to flouting the advice of security experts: his failings include using essentially the same logon and password for many similar sites, relying on easily remembered words — and, heaven forbid, writing them down on scraps of paper. So his new year's resolution is to set up a proper software vault for the various passwords and ditch the dog-eared list.
Your correspondent's one consolation is that he is not alone in using easily crackable words for most of his passwords. Indeed, the majority of online users have an understandable aversion to strong, but hard-to-remember, passwords. The most popular passwords in Britain are "123" followed by "password". At least people in America have learned to combine letters and numbers. Their most popular ones are "password1" followed by "abc123".
Unfortunately, the easier a password is to remember, the easier it is for thieves to guess. Ironically, the opposite — the harder it is to remember, the harder it is to crack is often far from true. That is because, not being able to remember long, jumbled sets of alphanumeric characters interspersed with symbols, people resort to writing them down on Post-it notes left lying around the office or home for all and sundry to see.
Apart from stealing passwords from Post-it notes and the like, intruders basically use one of two hacks to gain access to other people's computers or networks. If time and money is no problem, they can use brute-force methods that simply try every combination of letters, numbers and symbols until a match is found. That takes a lot of patience and computing power, and tends to be the sort of thing only intelligence agencies indulge in.
What should you do to protect yourself? Choose passwords that are strong enough to make cracking them too time consuming for thieves to bother.
The strength of a password depends on its length, complexity and randomness. A good length is at least eight symbols. The complexity depends on the character set. Using numbers alone limits the choice to just ten symbols. Add upper- and lower-case letters and the complexity rises to 62. Use all the symbols on a standard ASCII keyboard and you have 95 to choose from.
The third component, randomness, is measured by a concept borrowed from thermodynamics — the notion of entropy (the tendency for things to become disordered). In information theory, a tossed coin has an entropy of one "bit" (binary digit).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends 80-bit passwords for state secrets and the like. Such security can be achieved using passwords with 12 symbols, drawn from the full set of 95 symbols on the standard American keyboard. For ordinary purposes, that would seem overkill. A 52-bit password based on eight symbols selected from the standard keyboard is generally adequate.
How to select the eight? Best to let a computer program generate them randomly for you. Unfortunately, the result will be something like 6sDt% k&3 that probably needs to be written down. One answer, only slightly less rigorous, is to use a mnemonic constructed from the first letters (plus contractions) of an easily remembered phrase like "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (MCalotFA) or "To be or not to be: that is the question"(2Bo-2b).
Given a robust 52-bit password, you can then use a password manager to take care of the dozens of easily guessable ones used to access various web services. There are a number of perfectly adequate products for doing this. In an early attempt to fulfill his new year's pledge, your correspondent has been experimenting with LastPass, a free password manager that works as an add-on to the Firefox web browser for Windows, Linux or Macintosh.
Your correspondent looks forward to using the service while travelling around Japan over the next month or so. To be on the safe side, however, his dog-eared list of passwords will still go with him.
单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that
  • A. America takes the initiative to satisfy consumers.
  • B. Japan takes up the leading edge of technology.
  • C. Europe tries to invent most advanced technology.
  • D. Japanese consumers are the most greedy and fussy.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】推断题。从首段开始浏览。首句提及记者的行为“crosses the Pacific to Japan for a month or so. He repeats the trip during the summer”，第三句对此行为做出解释：他对此非常重视是为了了解前锐科技，这些科技一旦经世界上最贪心的消费者调试通过，那么一两年后将会在美国和欧洲商店疯卖。由此可以推断，作者去日本的目的是为了了解先进技术，[B]“日本处于技术前沿”符合文意，故为答案。 [避错] 文章中提及美国和欧洲时只是提及在美国和欧洲商店开始售卖这个结果，[A]和[C]与此无关，排除；虽然文中提及once debugged by the world's most acquisitive consumers，但无法推断这些贪婪的消费者是哪国人，[D]无依据，排除。
单选题 All the following about the correspondent are CORRECT in the passage EXCEPT that
  • A. he's made up his mind to change some of his passwords.
  • B. security experts have given advice on creating passwords.
  • C. most of his passwords are easy-to-remember ones.
  • D. he has a bad habit of writing down his passwords casually.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】细节题。根据试题顺序继续从第二段开始浏览。第三段末句指出“so his new year's resolution is to set up a proper software vault for the various passwords and ditch the dog-eared list”，可见，他的新年打算是“购买合适的软件储存他众多的密码并扔掉他那破烂的记事本”，[A]与文意不符，故为答案。 [避错] 第三段首句指出“他承认他漠视安全专家的建议”，可见安全专家曾给出如何创建密码的建议，故[B]符合文意；第四段首句提及“Your correspondent's one consolation is that he is not alone in using easily crackable words for most of his passwords.”，这与下一句中的“strong, but hard-to-remember, passwords”构成对比，由此可推断[C]符合文意；[D]是对第三段首句中“writing them down on scraps of paper”的解释，符合文意。
单选题 Long and hard-to-remember passwords can be cracked NOT because
  • A. intelligent thieves are good at guessing.
  • B. intruders are patient enough to compute.
  • C. hackers have access to others' networks.
  • D. they are often noted down and seen by others.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】细节题。由题干中的long and hard-to-remember passwords以及试题顺序定位至第五段。首句指出“Unfortunately, the easier a password is to remember, the easier it is for thieves to guess.”，接下来提到难记住的密码为什么会被破解，在各种原因中，均未提及guess这个话题，[A]不符合文意，故为答案。 [避错] 第五段末句提到“密码越难被记住也越难被破解，事实常常并非如此”的原因“people resort to writing them down on Post-it notes left lying around the office or home for all and sundry to see”。[D]符合文意；第六段首句的“Apart from stealing passwords from Post-it notes and the like”表明，接下来的内容是难密码被破译的其他原因，[B]是对第六段末句“That takes a lot of patience and computing power”的解释；第六段首句的 “intruders basically use one of two hacks to gain access to other people's computers or networks”表明[C]符合文意。
单选题 A password with ______ is more difficult to be cracked.
  • A. eight symbols randomly selected
  • B. twelve symbols randomly selected
  • C. numbers and letters randomly selected
  • D. the initial letters of an easy-to-remember phrase
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】推断题。按照试题顺序继续浏览下文。从第八段开始作者开始介绍如何设置网站密码，首句指出“The strength of a password depends on its length, complexity and randomness.”，之后分别介绍了密码的长度、复杂程度和随机性。第十段第二句指出“Such security can be achieved using passwords with 12 symbols, drawn from the full set of 95 symbols on the standard American keyboard.”，再结合第十一段第二句的“Best to let a computer program generate them randomly for you.”可以判断，一个随机产生的12种符号组成的密码是非常安全，很难破解的，故[B]为答案。 [避错] 第八段提到“A good length is at least eight symbols. The complexity depends on the character set. Using numbers alone limits the choice to just ten symbols.”，这说明密码越长越好，排除[A]；同时也说明密码中包含符号的类型越多越好，如果只局限于数字和字母则复杂程度降低，排除[C]；第十一段末句提到“使用助记符，根据第一个字母(加上缩减)构成一个容易记忆的句子”，但从末句中的“only slightly less rigorous”可以判断，这种方法与第二句提到的“Best to let a computer program generate them randomly for you”相比没有后者严密，排除[D]。
单选题 What is the main idea of the passage?
  • A. Why not to write down passwords on notebooks?
  • B. How to choose complex and long passwords?
  • C. How to stay safe while surfing the web?
  • D. What to do to fight with thieves and hackers?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】主旨题。本文开篇用一个故事引出“网站密码”这个主题。第三段指出他在记事本上记录网站登录信息和密码很不安全。接下来提到网民使用密码的状况以及黑客如何侵入他人计算机的方法。第七段提出“那你该如何保护你自己?”这个设问，给出答案“选择那种足够强大以至让那些盗贼要费许多时间才可破解的密码。”接下来作者通过大量篇幅解释什么样的密码才是安全的，以及如何设置它们。由此可见，全文围绕的主旨是给出如何设置安全密码的建议，故[C]为答案。 [避错] [A]是在谈到如何设置安全密码这个主旨之前，作者谈及到的原因，是引出文章主旨的部分细节，排除；[B]具有很强干扰性，作为主旨，此项过于具体，设置密码的三个主要指标：length，complexity，randomness，而这里只涉及到两个，不全面，排除；而[D]范围过大，thieves可以泛指偷窃者，没有局限在互联网这个领域，排除[D]。