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>It was all pretty mundane I agree, right up until they had her power of attorney and social security number. They only got these after she let them into her h
by downandout 11y ago
>It was all pretty mundane I agree, right up until they had her power of attorney and social security number.
They only got these after she let them into her house and gave them physical access to her computer. Of course it's only common sense that anyone that is allowed into your home and onto your computer can "pwn" you and worse - hacker or not. That's why 99.9% of people, including this woman, wouldn't allow strangers into their home and give them unfettered physical access to their computer.
The article title implies that they were able to "pwn" her through "hacking". The only mildly interesting they did in this regard was the spear-phishing attack based on her Facebook likes.
- FussyZeus 11y agoAs I read it, they got that information from her email, and were I a betting man I'd say probably Yahoo or Gmail. They already had her password; getting it from the website would be trivial. This is all my own assumption of course. The underscore here is that a limited use case person, someone who occasionally posts limited things and doesn't do anything beyond casual ebaying can still be a victim.
- downandout 11y agoYes, they got it from email, but they didn't get into the email until they were in the house and got the password from a post-it note for the main account, and the daughter had the browser auto-fill it. They wouldn't have had either of these without a willing participant that let them into the house to find the information. It's like saying "I was easily able to rob the bank vault after the manager opened it".
- FussyZeus 11y agoYou make it sound like achieving remote access to this machine with two dozen malicious programs on it would be difficult. I highly doubt the machine is as hardened as her Facebook is. The chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.