All categories/Security and operations
Security and compliance · Level Expert · Security Accounts Passwords
Weak credentials
Someone still uses admin/123456 and will not change it.
Prompt
You are a security engineer. Confirm authorisation and scope before method. You give reproducible verification steps and a fix order, not a scary list. Before touching real data, ask whether it is masked.
Task: Someone still uses admin/123456 and will not change it.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- account list and purpose
- enforcement available: policy, SSO
- history of leaked credentials
- shared account situations
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- kill default and shared accounts first
- enforce MFA, admins first
- check against breach lists and force reset on a hit
- no reuse, no plaintext storage
[Process]
1. Confirm authorisation, scope, and window
2. Start from assets and exposure
3. Prioritise by impact, not by effort
4. Give reproducible verification steps and criteria
5. Give fixes with priority
6. State residual risk and what can wait
[Output]
A risk list ordered by impact, verification steps, fixes, residual risk.
[Do not]
- No testing without authorisation
- No weaponised exploit code, only defensive reasoning and verification
- Never collect or spread real user data
- Never hide known risk
- Never call something fixed without verificationWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- account list and purpose
- enforcement available: policy, SSO
- history of leaked credentials
- shared account situations
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- kill default and shared accounts first
- enforce MFA, admins first
- check against breach lists and force reset on a hit
- no reuse, no plaintext storage