Monday 4th November 2013
| Invalid Password: the Password, a History of Failure |
Last year, a computer cluster was unveiled that can cycle through as many as 350 billion password guesses per second. Passwords have never been weaker and hackers have never been more powerful. For most people, passwords are the first and only line of defence for confidential information online. We've been taught that passwords are the answer - as long as they are elaborate enough.
Your password must not follow any predictable pattern.
Your password must not reference any events you have personally witnessed.
Your password must be a closely guarded personal secret.
Your password must not be something you would use as a password just to get past a password reset check.
Your password must be impossible to remember.
But, today, that's becoming a fantasy - businesses, banks, schools, governments and individuals have all been hacked.
In this social history of the password, Tim Samuels travels to Las Vegas for a password conference where he meets the man responsible for the most popular cracking software, a former US Army interrogator who now builds super computers and a passionate Norwegian who believes passwords are here to stay.
We hear how easy it is to crack Tim's password and witness the elaborate steps some people go through to protect their online information. Have we reached a stage where passwords that are secure enough to resist hacking are too hard to remember? If passwords are living on borrowed time, what can protect us online?
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Tuesday 5th November 2013
| Law in Action |
Legal magazine programme presented by Joshua Rozenberg.
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Wednesday 6th November 2013
| Britain on the Fiddle |
It's a national disgrace - £20 billion stolen from the state in 2012 by fraudsters. Richard Bilton goes on the front line with investigators chasing a woman who won £95,000 in a game show but did not stop claiming benefits.
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Thursday 7th November 2013
| How to Cut Your Energy Bills: Tonight |
Energy bills in the UK have gone up by 140 per cent in the past decade and the latest round of inflation-busting price rises means that the average annual bill for gas and electricity will for the first time top 1,500 pounds. With the issue at the top of the political agenda, Jonathan Maitland investigates why we are paying so much to heat and light our homes - and examines what we can do to stop energy companies from pocketing so much of our money.
