SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

It took the hackers less than two hours to take over Patsy Walsh’s life [nytimes.com].

On a recent Friday, Mrs. Walsh, a grandmother of six, volunteered to allow two hackers to take a crack at hacking her home. How bad could it be?

Mrs. Walsh did not consider herself a digital person. As far as she knew, her home was not equipped with any “smart devices,” physical objects like refrigerators and thermometers that transmit information to the Internet. Sure, she has a Facebook account, which she uses to keep up on friends’ lives, but rarely does she post about her own.
...
From there, the hackers made their way to the back of Mrs. Walsh’s house, where her PC was waiting. With her passwords posted on the nearby router, their task was easy. Within minutes, they had not only broken into Mrs. Walsh’s email account, but also that of her daughter — who at some point had allowed the computer’s browser to auto-fill her password. (As a courtesy, the hackers made sure to send Mrs. Walsh’s daughter an email from her own account with the subject line: “Reminder: Change my password.”)

They searched Mrs. Walsh’s email for the term “SSN” and within seconds had access to her Social Security number, her PayPal account, her air miles account and her insurance information. They had even gotten their hands on her power of attorney form.

The worst part was the hackers discovered somebody else had been there before them.

Original Submission