Baby Photos and Online Security

Mat Honan's digital life was destroyed within the space of one hour as hackers were able to gain access to his GMail, Twitter, Amazon, and AppleID accounts. From there they remotely erased his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook — trashing years of emails, documents, and ALL of the photos and videos of his baby daughter.

How they accomplished this was a masterful manipulation of companies, their employees, and the data that different sites store about us. Through a combination of scavenging for bits of personal info and social engineering, the hackers were able to completely take over Mat's digital existence.

Find out how they did it and what you can do to avoid the same fate!

Transcript

1. Baby Photos!
2. Baby Photos! (and online security)
3. Bradley Batt @bradbatt brad.me October 5th, 2012 Spark Plaza
4. "In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed... — Mat Honan
5. "In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed... First my Google account was taken over, then deleted... — Mat Honan
6. "In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed... First my Google account was taken over, then deleted... Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages... — Mat Honan
7. "In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed... And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook." First my Google account was taken over, then deleted... Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages... — Mat Honan @mat
9. X X X
10. @mat
11. Google showed recovery email: m***n@me.com
16. Dec 2009 — 32 million
17. Dec 2009 — 32 million 420K ??? 8.2M June / July 2012
18. Dec 2009 — 32 million 420K ??? 8.2M 453K 6.5M 1.5M June / July 2012
19. 1 2 3 4 5? That's amazing. I've got the same combination on my luggage.
22. "Two-factor authentication is one of the best things you can do to make sure your accounts don’t get hacked." — Lifehacker Australia
29. Best Security Practices Strong passwords / Two-factor Unique emails for accounts brad+nytimes@gmail.com or brad+news@gmail.com brad+paypal@gmail.com or brad+money@gmail.com Use good “security questions” Secure websites (https://)
30. “Security Questions” The best answers are non-sensical! Pet’s name? Spaghetti
31. Look for the Lock!
34. $1,690
36. brad.me/2factor Bradley Batt @bradbatt brad.me