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Mumble and Nod

Wired reports that Hackers Run Wild and Free on AOL.

"A third hacker, using the name hakrobatik, confirmed the mumbling method.

'I kept calling and pretending I just had jaw surgery and mumbling gibberish," hakrobatik said. "At first I had no info except the screen name, then I called and got the first name and last name by saying, 'Could you repeat what I just said?' Then each time that I got information I called back making the real information understandable, and everything else I just mumbled.'"

I suspect this tactic is so remarkably effective because of the way it plays to AOL's corporate culture. (I've seen design reviews and product direction given with almost exactly the same level of attention.)

Comments (2)

I had my AOL account hacked once. I wondered how it happened. I've never entered my screenname and password onto any page I got from an e-mail (remember AOL will never ask for your password) and I haven't responded to any e-mails claiming to be from AOL (I forget where, but you can get a list of the dosen or so e-mail addresses AOL uses t communicate with you, anything is not officially from AOL)

So in spite of me making sure my account was secure, it could have been hacked because someone called a tech support and mumbled? These tech support folks really need better training then.

Braddles:

I take it the author of the article has never heard of hardware encryption. I think this whole story is bogus. Just because some twerp 'claims' to have 'haXored the system' doesn't make it true.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 21, 2003 4:13 PM.

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