Getting access to the admin account of a system would normally give a hacker total and unrestricted access to anything they wanted to view.
As well as keeping the password private its also possible in most situations to try and keep the username itself private. A lot of systems use a generic firstname.surname or firstinitial.surname naming system for their users and then make a hackers job much easier by naming the admin account “admin” or “administrator”.
If someone saw this list of accounts they now know which account name to try and break into:
By keeping the naming convention the same for all accounts an attacker needs to do more homework before they can figure out which account to try and break into. Anything that results in an attacker needing to spend more resources/time on your systems increases the chance of them giving up and leaving.
Names to avoid:
- Admin
- Administrator
- Default
- Root
- [blank]
- Anything that looks different compared to other usernames on the system
Can I create a non-admin account and call it admin?
Yes, you sneaky dog! Most people wouldn’t suspect an admin account of being fake and is likely to waste the time of anyone trying to break into your system.
How to change the username in Windows 7:
Each OS will have its own instructions for changing username, heres an example using Windows 7:
- Log into Windows using the admin account you wish to change the name of.
- Start >> Control panel >> user accounts.
User accounts windows 7 - Click on “change your account name”.
- Choose a less obvious name for the account and press “change name”.
Urban Security Research 