Mac Tips and "How To" On a Mac: April 2014

This list is a compilation of 49 leaks and hacks that were made public.
The Master Passwords 2014 Wordlist is composed of about 598,712,000 real passwords.
The details are explained below in the < Rant > part.

If anyone has news about:
1) WPT Amateur Poker League
2) eBay
Please let me know, we could find a mutually beneficial exchange of information.

I have bad news for you:
In the past 20 years, computers have evolved incredibly fast. Alas, our brains did not and people are still really bad at picking passwords. As we've been stuck with the same brain for a while, we tend to think alike and people keep on picking the same (bad) passwords, or patterns over and over again. The bad news? a quick statistical analysis will provide you (or me) (or the bad guy) with enough ammo to rip your

This list differs slightly from the previous with newcomers to the top 100, mainly thanks to Adobe "House-Of-Cards" Protocol: A single user can reveal the password of ~~10,000~~ 1,911,938 others (exactly) (within minutes)

Take a look below and you'll be surprised.

The full Master Passwords list is available here
Passwords in italic are patterns based

Rank	Count	Password	Rank	Count	Password	Rank	Count	Password

1	1343751	123456	34	34986	charlie	67	23946	internet
2	523769	123456789	35	34969	computer	68	23832	asdfasdf
3	411288	password	36	34771	asdfgh	69	23713	zxcvbnm
4	223699	12345678	37	34711	nicole	70	23508	buster
5	211665	adobe123	38	34157	michelle	71	23497	1qaz2wsx
6	146405	1234567	39	34108	superman	72	23353	asdfghjkl
7	145684	qwerty	40	33875	tigger	73	23294	555555
8	127770	111111	41	33376	chocolate	74	23026	753951
9	123196	12345	42	32941	121212	75	22795	summer
10	99254	iloveyou	43	32684	soccer	76	22786	123qwe
11	92613	123123	44	31825	fuckyou	77	22636	alexander
12	89501	000000	45	30539	football	78	22594	rockyou
13	89196	abc123	46	29749	jordan	79	22474	killer
14	85660	1234567890	47	29309	master	80	22198	pepper
15	83473	photoshop	48	28928	jennifer	81	22109	fdsa
16	63929	princess	49	28842	987654321	82	21919	asdasd
17	63158	1234	50	28760	112233	83	21470	qazwsx
18	57964	654321	51	28538	liverpool	84	21135	222222
19	56758	adobe1	52	28516	hannah	85	20920	ginger
20	56680	macromedia	53	27841	adobeadobe	86	20470	freedom
21	49519	azerty	54	27459	qwertyuiop	87	20329	trustno1
22	48551	monkey	55	27337	purple	88	20192	samsung
23	47852	sunshine	56	27321	andrea	89	20094	abcd1234
24	47325	aaaaaa	57	26987	thomas	90	20030	dreamweaver
25	45067	666666	58	26340	joshua	91	19950	abcdef
26	44412	daniel	59	25745	andrew	92	19811	102030
27	42761	michael	60	25636	welcome	93	19374	11111111
28	40643	password1	61	25596	secret	94	19017	123654
29	39260	123321	62	25250	whatever	95	18965	123123123
30	38144	jessica	63	24564	7777777	96	18022	abc
31	36577	shadow	64	24221	1q2w3e4r	97	17981	matrix
32	36170	letmein	65	24103	maggie	98	17166	1q2w3e
33	35385	dragon	66	24049	baseball	99	17056	test
						100	16600	asdfghj

< Rant >

Thank you Adobe!
Having 130 million accounts leaked online was already pretty bad, but thanks to some incredible stupidity, or disregard to your customers, you've chosen to use the same symmetric key and one bad choice after another:
1) All identical passwords have the same Key.
2) Adobe left the hint in *clear*
3) Then some people just give out their passwords, flat-out, in the "Hint" field.

A Hint is something that should somewhat subtle, alas, this is not understood by everyone.

Anyone, with two neurons connected can now collect millions of passwords with the corresponding email address. Heeeyaaaa! Spammers and criminals are thanking you!

Please allow me a small smörgåsbord of examples, with some of them waiting to receive a Darwin Award.

[edited]@yahoo.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-Color Starts with P|--
- humm.... pellow? plue? preen? pose? Though one... purple maybe?

Now that we have a serious hint that "6KJbvp1JGKY=" equals purple, all you have to do is to confirm it: Just read the hints , they are in *clear*.

[edited]@gmail.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-What is the color of plums?|--
[edited]@shaw.ca-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-colour purple|--
[edited]@hotmail.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-a color almost the same as violet|--
[edited]@msn.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-p u r p l e ( NO SPACE )|--

Then you have little doubt left "6KJbvp1JGKY=" is for "purple"

If you Grep the file for "6KJbvp1JGKY=" anyone can quickly count how many times it appears: 16,092 times.
In 30 seconds, you've discovered 16,000 accounts (passwords and emails)
The major issue with leaving the hints in clear is a house of cards effect: Not only it affects directly multiple accounts (One user will reveal the password of many), but also can branch out far and wide: A house of cards AND a snowball effect, making it a perfect storm.
Someone may have used an unguessable hint, but it will be revealed anyway by the ECB encryption: Same key = Same password
[edited]@yahoo.com-|-6KJbvp1JGKY=-|-myspace password|--

Even if "[edited]@yahoo.com" did not reveal his password, "[edited]@shaw.ca" did it for him, and for 2 different accounts. you now have his Adobe account and his Myspace account too.

Having your Myspace or FB account hacked is not funny, but hey, you'll survive. Just tell your mom that's it's not you drunk-naked on the picture. Mention to your boss too that you never posted that his wife is an ugly fat cow.

Where it may hurt a bit more is when you leave a hint such as "Same as Amazon" You may have just given someone access to your Amazon account. Is there a Credit Card number associated with it?

But hey, nobody is stupid enough to leave a hint such as this, right?

[edited]=-|-amazonpass|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon|--
[edited]=-|-same as amazon pass|--
[edited]=-|-same as computer, same as amazon account|--
[edited]=-|-amazon account password is the same|--

And that goes on for hundreds of them....

So thanks a lot! Lemme order few things on Amazon... I always wanted a good GPU or two ( 2880 CUDA cores :) Coupled with JTR or Hashcat, It's going to be fun ... few million hash per second...
Plus, thanks to Adobe, you're paying ...

All you have to do is to sort the file by encryption key, and read a bit. Within minutes you'll have 1000's of accounts and within 2 hours, with a little grep, you'll get 1,341,000 accounts & passwords without a sweat.

Knowing that 45-50% of people re-use their password on other sites, one could imagine the tally: 625,000 reusable passwords

So why Adobe, a company with a lot of resources, did such a bad job at protecting your account?
The answer resides in the fact that it's cheaper and faster to have a lawyer releasing a carefully crafted PR statement rather than spending some money (and time) protecting your account.

< Rant/ >

So, why is it bad? and what can YOU do to protect, not only your account, but also your bank account? If you've read the PR release from Adobe, you'll have noticed that they *think* that no credit cards numbers were accessed in *clear*

The real scary part is that about 50% of the people re-use the same passwords again and again: A quick grep over "always" "identical" "same" and "usual" returns over 1 million hits.
Then, sifting trough the hints, you find the scary ones: "same email pass" "same as student loan" "same as email" "same Amazon"

And then comes the King of the Kings: "same as bank" and "same as social".
Ditto, hundreds of them! They are begging to be Pwned or financially raped.

So, dear Uber-Moron, thanks a lot for telling *in clear* where someone should hit you.

Being able to access your email is already pretty scary: Forget Pwning your Facebook account, Accessing your emails and looking for bank or loan info, etc. Then kicking you of your own email account and requesting a password change for your bank....

But you think that been owned and pwned that bad cannot happen to you? Nope, Just take a look at Gawker, with his CEO using "24862486" as his password or this other CEO, of an Internet security company, mind you, getting so Pwned that he could not sit for weeks.

With time, your machine seems to be slower, no?
Here is 5 easy way to improve performances and speed up the whole thing.

Foreword and warning:
-You could be tempted to use an app called MacKeeper. Me, myself and I, DO NOT recommend at all the use of this... well, this thing.
Some call it MacKrapper, and I concur 100%.

- Backup your stuff. Always. Always backup your stuff.
For that, there is Time Machine, or even better a Time Capsule. I can not praise enough Time Machine, and when coupled with a Time Capsule, it's nothing short of orgasmic. See under External HDD, I'll show you a fantastic way to backup your stuff and bullet proof your life.

This article has 2 sections: The easy-quicky way, and the deep cleaning

Easy-Quicky

Start Up Items
Yes, it's cool to have 5 apps opening at boot, but you are draining your system right from the start.
If you can avoid it, it's better. Furthermore, you are unlikely to use 3 or 5 apps right from the start.
Also, take a look at your Menu bar: having 10 items up there does no good for you: You most likely will only use a few.
Go to System Preferences > Users and Groups > Login Items
Uncheck at will. I roughly uncheck everything but the critical.

Purge
A quick and very easy way to purge your RAM: Open Terminal and just type "purge" , without the quotes you silly! Don't forget to press enter! (#justsayin')
You need 10.7 + for purge

Widgets
Ditto, get rid of what you don't use. Furthermore, if you really miss them, you can always re-install them in a click.

Add More RAM (memory)
Yes, it costs, but there is no secret! Adding more RAM will greatly increase the performances of your machine, it's by far the most efficient fix.
You do not need to buy your RAM from Apple, as they charge way too much!
This 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz module cost less than $125, compared to the $300 - $400 charged by Apple.

Why:
When your memory start to run low, your OS will "swap" electronic memory to "virtual" memory. Virtual memory is nothing less than Hard Drive space used as memory. The issue is that the speed (Read/Write) of an Hard Drive compared to pure electronic memory is much slower... hence it simply takes more time and make your computer appears to be sluggish.

- If you do not know what type of memory you need, check under "About this Mac" > More Info > Memory
- If you do not know how to change the memory, follow this link
- Be aware that some iMac, i.e 21.5 inches cannot have a memory upgrade

- Pairing the memory:
☞ If you have only 2 slots, (i.e Mac Mini, most of Macbook, Macbook pro, Macbook air) you will have to change the memory completely: It is NOT recommended to add just one memory: You cannot have one 2 GB and one 4 GB. Mixing memory modules only works if you have 4 memory slots.
If you have 2 memory slot, you'll have to change both and get the same size, i.e 2x4GB or 2x8GB
☞ If you have 4 memory slots, i.e iMac 27inches, you can add more memory by pairing it correctly, hence you do NOT have to change all the memory modules
Example: You already have 4GB, and want to upgrade to 24 GB by adding 16GB as 2x8 GB

(iMac is upright)
Slot 1 --> 4GB (Top)
Slot 2 --> 8 GB
Slot 3 --> 4GB
Slot 4 --> 8 GB (Bottom)

De-cluster
Easier said than done, but you probably have more junk on your hard drive than you would admit. I know, it's a tedious job that nobody wants to do, but it works ...
So here is an easy way to de-cluster:

Get yourself a copy of:
- Trial version of the "Classic" Clean My Mac, not the new "Clean My Mac 2"
- Free copy of App Cleaner

Run the trial version of Clean My Mac, there is a limit of ~500MB
Be careful and read the preference pane.

As you can see, just Google Earth and Garmin account for 6GB of space.
Once you have reached the limit, close the app and run App Cleaner on Clean My Mac and select ONLY the plist, delete the Plist, and re-start Clean My Mac

Automagically, you'll restart with a brand new trial version.
You can do the same by manually deleting the plist file located at: ~/Library/Preferences/com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.plist

Remove Un-used and obsolete Apps
Now that you have App Cleaner, use it. You can trash those apps that you have not used for the past 2 years.

Reboot
I have seen Macs with 60 days+ without a reboot
From time to time, it's a good idea to reboot: it takes 20 sec and will give your machine a breather, clears the swap and RAM

Deep Cleaning

Once you've done all of the above, let's go a little deeper ...
Repeat: Adding RAM is what will make the most serious difference.
Furthermore: As the upgrade for Mavericks is free, a lot of people have upgraded directly from 10.6.8 and then realized that their Mac got a little bit sluggish. Well... RAM my friend! 10.6.8 was able to run on 1GB RAM, not so much for Mavericks! That's what 10.9 uses for a snack.

Repair permissions
Go get yourself a free copy of Onyx and run it.
Be careful with Onyx, it's powerful...

Once done, go take a look under "cleaning" Use with caution, i.e "cookies"
always check the big offenders, Firefox, Google Earth, etc are Cache Hogs.
Check also your logs, some people like to keep them, some don't.

Unused Languages, part 2
Delete unused languages (Klingon, Uzbek, Telugu, Etc ) with Monolingual
Monolingual removes more languages than Clean My Mac
Proof? 628MB of languages removed after cleaning with Clean My Mac ...

DO NOT REMOVE ENGLISH! Some apps will only work with English.
Check carefully the languages that you remove!

Deep De-Cluster

That's the most painful and tedious for me, so I took the easy solution:
Get yourself an external HDD and bullet proof your Digital Life. Here is how:

- You can find a 1TB External HDD USB 3 for less than $70 w/ free shipping. Get one!
- Get yourself a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (Donation-ware)
- Partition your HDD in 1,2 or 3 partitions if you want to. (With DiskUtility, it's very easy)

1) Carbon copy your HDD and transfer the copy to your external HDD
- You have now a fail safe exact replica of your Mac OS, with everything, shall your Mac HDD fail, or you Mac altogether AKA Starbucks accident! you can now boot with the USB (just hold the option key at boot) and have your life back.
You can also also boot on any Mac, if you have fried your Mac, you can use a second Mac, or even go to an Apple Store and explain the situation...

2) If you have selected a multiple partition, you can have a either a multiboot drive i.e OS X and Ubuntu or Windows
Or
3) A carbon copy of your present OS + another OS + a partition used as backup for your files and junk.

Now that you have everything backed up, let's go into the work ...

Big offenders

Get yourself a free copy of Disk Inventory X, install and run it
You'll get a picture of where your space went..
You can now move your big files to your External HDD, or zap' em
A quick check on my HDD revealed 24+ GB of old iMovies, junk etc ... now gone or saved elsewhere

Mac Mail
If like me you've kept all your email since the birth of Jesus, you have a ton of junk.
It's time to trim the fat out of Mac Mail
- Sort by size and delete those funny videos that you have not watched for the last 3 years, etc ...
- Search for the word "unsubscribe" in your email: You'll find a zillion marketing emails that you don't care about.
Look for those pictures that are also in iPhoto, in Dropbox and also in your email: Yes, you have 3 copies...

Find Duplicates
That's tedious, and takes a long time, but it may be worth it.
Always be cautious when removing duplicates! Thread lightly and always double check.

Dupe Guru is a "Fairware", without buying it, you can only remove 10 dupes at a time

Magician can also find dupes, it's free, but will ask for an email (?) it's an ok App, but only scans by folder (to compare). I make no warranty whatsoever about Magician. It does also other stuff and feel like an "Everything on you plate" kinda menu. I mean that they serve you the ice-cream on top of your steak.

MacKeeper I'd rather burn my Mac than install that crapware. It's App Porn. They have a bad, bad, bad karma. If you wish to spend money, then do it properly, for a good App: Araxis has a 7 days trial.

Finder anyone?
Finder has a little "+" button, often overlooked.
Once you click it, you'll find a zillion ways to search for specifics. It goes as far as finding pictures taken with the flash "on" with a specific aperture.

Defragmenter
Without going too deep into the intricate details of OS X, you do NOT need to defragment OS X. "When writing files, Mac OS X optimizes your disk space and avoids fragmenting large files into smaller segments"
That's it. Buying a defragmenter for Mac is money down the drain.
Also, if you have an SSD, (Solid State Drive) defragmenting is NOT recommended at all. Don't do it.