4chan iCloud 'expert' from CNN thinks 4chan is a person and 'pa$$word' is a good password

CNN 'technology analyst': 'Who is this 4chan person? We just don't know'

Although the average non-tech-savvy internet user could probably be forgiven for not knowing what 4chan is, most of us would expect the ‘technology analyst’ of an international TV news channel would know better. Right? Wrong.

CNN’s Brett Larson was lambasted far and wide across the web yesterday after he claimed that 4chan – an anonymous message board where those stolen celebrity photos were first posted – might be have been “a systems administrator who knew his away around and how to hack things”.

Okay, so, we admit that 4chan isn’t a household name (and definitely shouldn’t be) but confusing a website with a person hardly inspires confidence in a so-called technology expert (see below for the video).

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To make matters worse Larson – in between suppressing chuckles at all those women who were stupid enough to think their private photos might have been, you know, private - went on to give some terrible security ‘advice’, suggesting that users replace their password ‘password’ with (drum roll please) ‘pa$$word’.

This is, of course, ABYSMAL advice. Basic letter substitutions such as ‘$’ for ‘S’ or ‘3’ for ‘E’ have been part of a standard password-guessing toolkit for decades. Instead users should be avoiding common words or phrases (and anything with personal significance) all together - and turning on two-step verification just to be on the safe side.