Months After Being Hacked, OIT Decides Security Is A Concern

Moments after patting themselves on the back and toasting to a job well done, some guy named Steve pointed out to his OIT colleagues that most CU Boulder students and employees have never updated their passwords. “Well, actually,” said Steve as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “I’m pretty sure that at least half of these passwords have been around since back in the day when we stored passwords in the database as plaintext, and, as you might recall, that database was recently hacked.” 

Since everyone was pretty annoyed with Steve, OIT collectively decided to ignore him. This tactic appeared to be working well until Dan Jones, Associate Vice Chancellor of Integrity, Safety, and Compliance, reviewed the password database and noticed that 57% of CU passwords were, “password.” “It suddenly became clear that we needed to really think about caring about security or something,” said Jones. As a result, OIT gave CU faculty, staff, and students until February 8th to update their passwords or have it reset for them. For those of you who missed the deadline and are now struggling to come up with a new password that you’ll actually remember, The Bacon has the following recommendations for you: