OT: Holiday Inn screwup

If you can, it's best not to advertise the fact.

If you run your own email domain and server, then it's trivial to give them a one-time email address. Throw in a VOIP number that is never picked up and you are pretty set to go.

He wrote about it in a biography of those years. Does that count as not advertising the fact?

Those paper £20 notes are going not going to be legal tender after Sep 30th.

If you have the right mechanical intuition some locks don't put up much of a fight. I knew someone who was very good at it at university.

Feynman largely relied on scientists and mathematicians choosing secure

Not all that many combos to try. Likewise for birthdays & phone numbers.

The funniest one though was the super secure safe for ultra top secret material still with the manufacturer's default opening combination though. Military intelligence is often an oxymoron. Their "solution" such as it was was to keep Feynman away from that safe (rather than change the combination to something new truly secure and unique).

Anyone in the know looking at that model number would know the opening combination. Same sort of thing applies to internet routers today. Never broadcast your model number in the SSID it advertises weaknesses.

Yes I always set a non-default SSID (and one that doesn't mention the house name/number!) and change the WPA key and the router's admin password.

Do off-the-shelf routers (as opposed to ones supplied by ISPs) still come with default admin passwords such as "admin" or "password"? Or does the "build" process for routers now allocate unique passwords which are printed on a label supplied with the router?

My tp-link router has a number on a label underneath, which I imagine is different for every one!

I know - I've read it. Several times.

My point stands though. If you are able to pick a lock, it's best to keep it to yourself (for what I hope are obvious reasons).

Last lock I picked was a comms cabinet whose key was lost in some sort of vortex between a landlord, the ISP, the previous tenant and the building maintenance crew. All of whom insisted it was one of the others that had it.

I suspect I upset someones "nice little earner" at charging £300 for a call out replacement, since the moment the key wasn't needed, it appeared the next day.

Nice one Cyril!

Not very many at all anymore.

NY snipped-for-privacy@privacy.invalid wrote

Some do with admin.

Most do that now.

New ones now have random high entropy passwords but the older models all had easily guessable defaults. Admin pw=admin was far too common.

This still holds even now. And various ISPs are guilty of it.

Changing the admin password is mainly important if you give the Wi-Fi password to anyone, so they can't lock you out.

Max Demian <max snipped-for-privacy@bigfoot.com wrote

But they can still factory reset the router and avoid that.