How To Protect Passwords? What Top Maharashtra Cybersecurity Official Told NDTV

Drug trafficking pales in comparison to cybercrimes, a top official of the Maharashtra Cyber Department told NDTV on Monday, urging upon people to practise "cyber hygiene".

"Cybercrime is not getting that importance. It is the numero uno crime syndicate. Drug trafficking is nothing in comparison to it. Cyber hygiene is very important," Yashasvi Yadav, Additional DGP, Maharashtra Cyber Department, said at NDTV Yuva event in Mumbai.

The top official said that "cybercrime is growing exponentially", underscoring that password security is very important.

He then shared an anecdote, explaining how a friend of his lost Rs 5 crore to cybercrime despite having one of the longest words as his password.

"I had a friend who was scammed out of about Rs 5 crore in a cryptocurrency fraud. He told me, 'I had set my password as 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' - one of the longest words in India. How did it get hacked?'" the official said.

"How long do you think it would take an expert like me - or a cybercriminal - to crack that password?" I'll tell you: one second. That's because it is simply a dictionary word. Any dictionary word can be cracked in a second, whether it is long or short. That is why creating a complex password is crucial for security. That specific password could be broken in one second using a "brute-force attack". However, if you had a password consisting of just five characters - mixing symbols like asterisks, lowercase 'a', uppercase 'A', and a question mark - it would take that same software 60 years to crack it," the official said.

He underlined that it is "not the length of the password that matters, but its complexity and robustness".

The official also warned against using public Wi-Fi, calling it "the most dangerous thing you use".

"Public Wi-Fi I must say, it is the most dangerous thing you can use. It isn't just Wi-Fi; it grants access to your entire bank account and your entire mobile phone. If you trust the organization providing the Wi-Fi -like NDTV, for instance - then using it might be acceptable. But if you use it at a place like a railway station, criminals often set up their own local Wi-Fi networks there, and you might mistake them for the official railway station Wi-Fi," he said.

"They can access all your details - photos, passwords, contact lists -and this data becomes raw material for crimes like digital arrest, investment fraud, sexual extortion, and so on," he warned.