Most of you have probably heard by now about how the technology reporter Mat Honan’s accounts were hacked and how he lost his Google Mail, his Apple and Amazon account, his Twitter account and the contents of his iPhone and laptop. All in under one hour.
What’s fascinating about this story is that we know how it was done: there was no heavy brute-force attack on weakly-encypted passwords, no SQL injections on his company’s website. The hackers had no animosity towards him; they didn’t know who he was, they just liked his three-letter @mat Twitter ID. In other words, this could easily happen to you too!
If you haven’t heard the story, then I recommend listening to episode 364 of Security Now, which you can get from here or here. The discussion starts 30 mins into the programme.
You should probably listen to this if you, say, use the Internet…
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Very scary. Thanks for the tip. I’ve now enabled Google 2-step verification.