What Is a GitHub Password Breach and How To Prevent It

• Why You Should Have a Strong Password on GitHub
• How To Manage Your Passwords on GitHub With Passwarden
• Benefits of Using Passwarden

If you worry about a potential password breach on GitHub, putting all your GitHub data at risk of being stolen and sold on the dark web, read this guide urgently.

Password and data breach on any platform is an unfortunate and often costly incident. In most cases, a password breach leads to compromised data. But cybersecurity experts believe if you have a data breach first, your password may also get hacked before you know it. More often than not, cybercriminals actually have your login credentials in hand after a breach. These data are then sold on the black market for some value depending on the user’s identity and how much access they have.

A data breach on GitHub is highly dangerous, since GitHub is a hosting service that provides access control and collaboration features for your projects.

Why You Should Have a Strong Password on GitHub

Setting a strong password for your GitHub is only useful when a person is trying to guess it. The password is completely exposed if it is kept in an unencrypted database, regardless of its strength. This is a big fallacy, and GitHub aptly requires its users to change their passwords frequently.

Once hackers get access to several users’ login credentials formulas, they can readily apply cracking rules. To prevent these kinds of attacks, a GitHub user must use a strong password that is unique for their GitHub account. Alternatively, GitHub users can use a password manager that implements Multi-Factor Authentication. The bottom line is: never reuse passwords and do not use similar patterns that only change by a character, such as a single number.

If your GitHub login credentials ever appear in a data breach repository, they must never be used again by either you or any other person. Common (and uncommon) passwords that leak can be used as attack vectors by hackers.

They know that people generally use the same passwords across their sites and apps, including GitHub:

• This is precisely why you should change your passwords and get a password manager that generates super-strong random passwords for all your websites, and apps and stores them in a private and encrypted digital vault. If a password, no matter how random or complex, was revealed in a data breach, cyberattackers can use it to try on any other website that you use. It can also be documented in a “dictionary” attack with other unwitting users.
• You can dramatically reduce the overall data breach risk by using a good password manager that generates powerful and unique passwords for each site or app and encrypt them to keep the risk of breach at bay.

How To Manage Your Passwords on GitHub With Passwarden

Besides the breach issue, we use a wide range of online platforms and apps every day and often forget our login credentials. Even if we are gifted with powerful memories, we must repeatedly change our passwords for security reasons discussed earlier.

Meet Passwarden! A password manager that keeps track of all of your login information and sensitive data. Passwarden by Keepsolid is an app that runs on all major operating systems and platforms. This tool will organize your online identity and ends your password chaos. You can create and change your GitHub password immediately and automatically get updated on Passwarden.

Here’s how you can create solid passwords on Passwarden:

1. Launch Passwarden, choose GitHub, and press Edit. You may also click on + to create a new item.

2. Press Generate Password next to the Password field.

3. To include upper/lower case, digits and special characters in your password, toggle the corresponding switch on. You can also define the length of passwords using a slider button.

4. If you want to change your password, press the button to refresh.

5. Press Use Password and then confirm.