An episode of Real Future has shown how easy it is for the digital lives of everyday people to be watched, hacked, and even stolen away completely.
In the video below, Fusion.net's News Director Kevin Roose visits ‘DefCon’ - a hacking convention in Las Vegas. He then invites hackers to attempt to infiltrate his life over the space of two weeks using whatever methods they could think of. Predictably the hackers succeed, and Kevin finds himself at the complete mercy of strangers who could destroy his life in a couple of clicks.
Jessica Clark, a social engineering hacker, used vishing - a type of phishing scam which uses a telephone instead of email or coding - to gain access to Kevin's mobile phone through his mobile phone network provider. (1:37)
Jessica easily convinced the person on the other end of the phone to hand over Kevin's email address, and from there to set her up a new pin and password, locking Kevin out of his mobile account entirely in minutes. She did all this using nothing more than a phone call, and a recording of a crying baby.
Kevin's laptop wasn't safe either. Dan Tentler, an experienced hacker, was able to send Kevin a phishing email and fool him into clicking a link. This gave Dan full access to his computer, allowing him to create realistic looking pop ups asking Kevin for account and password information. (4:39)
As Kevin was using a password manager, Dan had access to all of his passwords and card information, allowing Dan into every aspect of Kevin's life and impersonate him almost completely.
The video ends by urging viewers to remember that the likelihood of a hacker targeting you with this amount of force is fairly slim - but it is important to think seriously about online security, and how you and your business could be at risk.
Do you think your practices and procedures could stop this kind of hack? Transcendit can help you to review your current practices and advise on ways to strengthen your security.
