Daring hackers to do what they do best is probably not the smartest move, but one journalist made the courageous (or, depending upon your viewpoint, slightly silly) decision to do just that, and the end results are pretty terrifying, to say the least.
Real Future’s Kevin Roose attended the DefCon hacking convention, where he watched just how easy it was for someone to obtain his personal details using little more than a few choice questions and a YouTube video of crying baby noises. But while that was scarily easy in and of itself, Roose then enlisted security researcher Dan Tentler to spend two weeks attempting to hack his life with the caveat that no money or other assets could be stolen.
From an initial phishing scam in which Tentler pretended to be a Squarespace employee, he then managed to obtain all of Roose’s passwords, his stock information, his social security number and his bank details. He managed to hack into Roose’s life with such efficiency that he claimed that he had effectively become Roose, with him being able to contact anyone he liked using the journalist’s identity.
The fascinating video can be watched below:
