Apple Support Gives Hacker Access to Blogger's iCloud
As we become more connected and more reliant on the web, top-notch security becomes more and more important. While some services like Gmail offer two-step verification to ensure only you can access your account, not every service offers security that's as air-tight. This past weekend, Wired's Mat Honan revealed that he had been hacked. Actually, the hackers themselves revealed that fact when they took control of Honan's Twitter account but Honan later divulged just how bad the attack was.
Honan says someone accessed his iCloud account at 4:50pm on Friday afternoon. This person reset the password and then sent the password reset confirmation email to the trash bin. After that, the hacker switched his or her focus to Honan's email account. Honan said in a blog post on Friday that the backup email address on his Gmail account is the same .mac email address. So, at 4:52pm, the attacker sent a Gmail password recovery to the .mac account and successfully reset his Gmail password.
Now, most of us would already be freaking out at this point. The idea of a stranger having access to your personal email is a very scary one. However, the hacker wasn't finished with Honan. At 5pm, the attacker wiped his iPhone. One minute later, they did the same to his iPad. At 5:05pm, his MacBook Air was wiped clean. After that, they accessed his Twitter and, because his Twitter was once linked to the account of his former employer Gizmodo, the hackers took the @Gizmodo account, too.