Sexy women coax passwords out of hackers
It seems all it takes for 75 percent of hackers and IT security professionals to hand over their personal online information is the seductive ways of a woman.
One would hope that IT workers on the frontlines of cybersecurity, as well as the technically adept hackers they battle, would know not to disclose personal information to a stranger they meet online. But that's not the case, according to a new study by the security firm Bitdefender, which found that both groups are likely to hand over their personal details to the right online "friend," especially if that friend is a woman.
Bitdefender researcher Sabina Datcu used a sample pool of 100 people, half from the IT security industry and the other half online criminals she found on underground cybercrime forums. To test how susceptible both groups were to scammers trolling for their online credentials such as passwords and phone numbers, Datcu created a fake profile of a 25-year-old woman, and then tailored it to each target group.
