Hackdoku · This really happened
Welcome2020
Municipality of Hof van Twente, the Netherlands2020
At the end of 2020 the Dutch municipality of Hof van Twente was hit by ransomware. An investigation showed that the password of an administrator account was Welkom2020, on a server that could be reached from the internet. For a long time the municipality could not carry out many of its services and the damage ran into the millions. The characters in this puzzle are made up. We do not name any real employees. The hack is real.
What can you learn?
A password that sounds logical can be guessed by a computer in no time. Make it long and unpredictable and use a different password for every account. Also turn on a second step, such as a login code.
This does not give away who the weak link in the puzzle is: the characters are made up.