Peace of Mind Organizing

A chilling (and cautionary) tale of hacking

27 August 2012

Mat Honan, a tech writer who writes for Wired magazine, recently was the victim of hacking. As a result, his MacBook Air, iPhone and IPad were wiped of all data (and he lost a year’s worth of photos) and Twitter account was taken over.

Honan details the episode—including how and why the hackers attacked him—in a riveting article on Wired’s website.

There are a couple of things in the article that surprised me. One is that the hackers’ whole goal was to take over his Twitter account, apparently they wanted his three letter Twitter handle, @mat. The wiping out of his computer and devices was just in support of that. Honan actually communicated with one of the hackers and found out just how they obtained his passwords. (And he shares the details in his article.)

The other thing that surprised me was that this knowledgeable tech writer did not back up his hard drive, something that is very easy to do on his MacBook. And he really ended up regretting that, since irreplaceable photos he’d taken of his young daughter were obliterated.

If you’re not already backing up your computer, read this and I think you’ll start. (I use Time Machine + CrashPlan Pro.) Also, the article details some weaknesses in Apple’s security, especially coupled with Amazon and Gmail.

Fascinating, if scary, reading.

ETA: Here’s an article in which Mat Honan details how he recovered much of his data (including his photos), to the tune of $1690.

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