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>A high school graduate, Lazar had no formal training or computer expertise. He told the New York Times that he obtained access to high-profile people’s email a

>A high school graduate, Lazar had no formal training or computer expertise. He told the New York Times that he obtained access to high-profile people’s email and social-media accounts by reading their Wikipedia pages and guessing passwords based on their personal information. If true, this is even more concerning.

ifoundthetao 10y ago
It's a "common" attack. Well, common enough, that it's something to consider if you have wells of information out there for people to draw from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack
pavel_lishin 10y ago
To be fair, if you break into my house, I don't care if you've spent years learning how to pick complicated locks without leaving a trace, or whether you just batter the door down with a big hammer. Although to call this a symptom of a "hacking epidemic" is ludicrous.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Dunno. Less like a hammer, more like picking up the spare key taped to the wall with a big sign taped to the door that says "key taped to wall".
  - throwanem 10y ago
    If there's one thing I have learned in my time on Hacker News, it's that likening software compromises to physical B&E or unlawful entry goes nowhere that's useful to anyone.
    - treehau5 10y ago
      Then why do security experts do it all the time? My first few security courses in my college computer science curriculum was filled with them, one of them was a book co-authored by Schneier.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Because they aren't interacting with an audience composed in significant part of querulous pedants who will promptly proceed to poke every imaginable hole into the metaphor, resulting in a vast and ultimately unproductive digression. (As a querulous pedant myself, I can hardly condemn such behavior! But I do try not to indulge that habit when doing so offers no benefit to anyone.)
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I'd say more like finding the key hidden in the fake rock. ...which is the only rock--real or fake--sitting on the front porch. ...and which is also coated in glow-in-the-dark orange paint, in case you need to find it at night. The epidemic must indeed stop. We need to immediately enroll 10% of all celebrities in remedial network security classes, and stop crying "hacker!" for stuff like informed password-guessing attacks against insecure passwords and violating terms of service by scraping web pages with curl or wget. The actual crime this guy committed was to annoy the powerful.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  I'm not sure the analogy holds. I would much rather someone pick my lock than smash my window. In both cases the house gets robs. In the latter, I also need to pay to repair my window. Much the same reason some people I know with expensive cars leave the door unlocked and the windows down :)

ifoundthetao 10y ago

It's a "common" attack. Well, common enough, that it's something to consider if you have wells of information out there for people to draw from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack

pavel_lishin 10y ago

To be fair, if you break into my house, I don't care if you've spent years learning how to pick complicated locks without leaving a trace, or whether you just batter the door down with a big hammer. Although to call this a symptom of a "hacking epidemic" is ludicrous.

mpweiher 10y ago
Dunno. Less like a hammer, more like picking up the spare key taped to the wall with a big sign taped to the door that says "key taped to wall".
- throwanem 10y ago
  If there's one thing I have learned in my time on Hacker News, it's that likening software compromises to physical B&E or unlawful entry goes nowhere that's useful to anyone.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Then why do security experts do it all the time? My first few security courses in my college computer science curriculum was filled with them, one of them was a book co-authored by Schneier.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Because they aren't interacting with an audience composed in significant part of querulous pedants who will promptly proceed to poke every imaginable hole into the metaphor, resulting in a vast and ultimately unproductive digression. (As a querulous pedant myself, I can hardly condemn such behavior! But I do try not to indulge that habit when doing so offers no benefit to anyone.)
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I'd say more like finding the key hidden in the fake rock. ...which is the only rock--real or fake--sitting on the front porch. ...and which is also coated in glow-in-the-dark orange paint, in case you need to find it at night. The epidemic must indeed stop. We need to immediately enroll 10% of all celebrities in remedial network security classes, and stop crying "hacker!" for stuff like informed password-guessing attacks against insecure passwords and violating terms of service by scraping web pages with curl or wget. The actual crime this guy committed was to annoy the powerful.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
I'm not sure the analogy holds. I would much rather someone pick my lock than smash my window. In both cases the house gets robs. In the latter, I also need to pay to repair my window. Much the same reason some people I know with expensive cars leave the door unlocked and the windows down :)