TV personality Kevin Roose asked for it, and he got it. He wanted to research how people get hacked, so he decided to invite some prominent hackers to hack him. And hack him they did, cracking into everything from his webcam (pictures every two minutes) to all his online accounts (including banks).
Personally, I wouldn’t do this. It’s all too apparent, to the hack-literate, how people get hacked; the harder part is figuring out how NOT to.
Some of the solutions he proposes are familiar, like using a password manager, which is unfortunately a sword sharp on both sides. Others were new to me: have you heard of an app called Little Snitch? It monitors your outgoing traffic for suspicious activity. (Why is my computer uploading my credit card statements to China?)
And some “solutions” are as effective for the cracker as for the person trying to protect themselves: using a VPN, for instance. You’ll see more on that subject in this space going forward.
In the mean time, give this article a look, prospective crackers, hackers and security professionals.
(Image courtesy of User:Colin at wikimedia.org)
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