Passage Five

The theft by a Russian syndicate of 1.2 billion username and password combinations from 420,000 websites around the world means that the personal details of almost half of all users of the internet must now be considered severely compromised. It can be only a matter of time before the victims find nasty surprises in their bank statements and credit-card accounts. To be on the safe side, anyone who uses financial and shopping websites should change their passwords forthwith —preferably to something longer, more jumbled, and including no word found in any dictionary. The more nonsensical the better.

Heads may nod in agreement, but the advice is then promptly ignored. Human nature, being what it is, has a habit of making people the weakest link in and security chain. For instance, passwords that are easy to remember — the ones most people choose — tend to be the easiest for cybercrooks to guess. By contrast, passwords comprising long, random strings of uppercase and lowercase letters plus numbers and other keyboard characters arc far more difficult to fathom. Unfortunately, they are also difficult to remember. As a result, users write them down on scraps of paper that get left lying around for prying eyes to see.

Basically, two factors determine a password's strength. The first is the number of guesses an attacker must try to find the correct one. This depends on the password's length, complexity and randomness. The second factor concerns how easy it is to check the validity of each guess. This depends on how the password is stored on a website's server.

What can individuals do to protect themselves? Apart from choosing passwords that are strong enough (ie, long, complex and random mixtures of ASCII characters) to make cracking their hashes too time consuming for thieves to bother with, there is actually not all that much more. Passwords get stolen and broken mainly because of poor choices made by those responsible for a website's security — especially the way it stores customers' validation details.

Given the pace of innovation in graphics processors, coupled with the increasing power of cracking software (mostly available for free on the internet), even the best password defences are destined to be overwhelmed in due course. After two thousand years of development, the password's days would finally seem numbered. Time to start investing in spoof-proof biometric factors that characterise each person uniquely as an individual.

Questions 21-25 are based on Passage Five.

Once their username and password combinations are stolen, it is advisable for online shoppers____.

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Safar's work began to change our perceptions of death —blurring the point that is meant to mark the end of our lives.“We've all been brought up to think death is an absolute moment — when you die you can't come back. It used to be correct, but now we've come to understand that even after you've become a cadaver, you're still retrievable."

The boundary between life and death is less and less c_____.

(46.Camps are either temporary. that is changed from day to day, or they are permanent and may be visited year after year. or they may be used for a few weeks at a time.) Temporary camps are the ones we are considering, and these can be elaborate or very, very simple. I prefer the latter, and I am sure the boys will agree with me.

(47. During the autumn and when the weather is dry and the nights not too cool, the best way to camp is in the open. sleeping on beds of boughs, about a roaring fire. and with one blanket under and another over.)

Small dog tents, like the ones our soldiers carried in the Civil War, are cheap and very convenient. Each man carried a section, and two made a tent, into which two men crawled when it rained, but in dry weather they preferred to sleep in the open, even when it was freezing.

(48.Shelters of boughs. arranged in an A-framed fashion from a ridge pole make good temporary shelters and are first rate as windbreaks at night.)

A shack built of crossed logs requires some time to build and some skill to make, but it is not beyond the reach of any boy who has seen - and who has not - an old-fashioned log shanty.But all boys, even trained foresters, are apt to get lost in strange woods. Every one, however, should know what to do in such a circumstance. As a rule the denser growth of moss on trees is on the north side. This knowledge may help find the direction, but it is better to carry a small pocket compass.

(49.When the sky is clear. the sun and the stars help to guide the course and if they are followed one is saved from traveling in a circle, as the lost are pretty sure to do in a dense forest .)

(50. If twigs are broken from bushes they will serve to show the course to nose out searching, A good plan is to follow down the course of a stream which always flows into a larger body of water and will lead to some abode.) If a hill is accessible, the lay of the land may be had from its summit. 

In any event, should you be lost, do not get ratted. You will be missed in camp and a search will be made by your friends. If you have to stay in the woods all night, make the best of it. Others have made the best of it by sleeping near the foot of a tree or beside a log. It will be more cheery if you can make a fire without anger to the woods.

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If you remember learning about the senses in elementary school, you know humans possess five: sense of sight, sense of smell, sense of bearing, sense of touch, and sense of taste. Most scientists agree, however, that you have more like ten to twenty senses, including pain, hunger, thirst, temperature, and more.

More senses than commonly k_____.

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Regular poor sleep can raise the risk of serious medical conditions like obesity, heart attack and diabetes - and can even shorten life expectancy. Adequate exposure to natural daylight is known to be crucial for governing the body's circadian rhythm — the built-in clock which dictates our sleeping and waking patterns.

A key factor to improve one's sleep and h_____.

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In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language's morphology - the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes.

A scientific discovery on language l_______.

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It may seem odd to chow down on a garden salad topped with lentils or salmon at 8 am, but who says breakfast meals have to look different than lunch or supper? Give it a try - you may just find that warmed up stir fry, veggie“pasta”, or a crisp entree salad is your new favorite way to start the day.

Suggestion on the f______ meal of the day.

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Malta is a beautiful southern European country in the Mediterranean Sea, which has a rich history and culture. There are amazing sky-high cliffs to climb, fabulous temples to explore, and lots of wonderful places to go scuba diving. The historic part of Malta has incredible architecture, great walled cities, and many underground tunnels to explore.

An attractive seaside r_____ for tourists.

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Brushing already acidic teeth can further the erosion of one's enamel. People need to give their teeth time to remineralize after being bathed in an acidic beverage. It's advisable to wait an hour after drinking before lifting a toothbrush.

T______ your time brushing your teeth after drinking.

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Shorter workdays have made headlines lately in Sweden. On I July, the city began a year-long experiment with six-hour days, enlisting a segment of government employees to work less than their eight-hour-a-day counterparts, for the same pay. The hope is that staffers working shorter days will accomplish just as much, only with more efficiency and less calling in sick.

An experiment on shorter workdays but h_____ productivity.

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The State Council of China issued a guideline to further accelerate household registration reform. A“points system” - mainly based on legal permanent employment and accommodation, seniority in social security and continuous residence - is to be established in cities with over 5m residents. Those who have accumulated certain points are qualified to apply for the cities' permanent household residence for themselves, their spouses, minor children and parents.

A p_____ of household registration reform is underway.