Not that he’s more special than any of us, but Gizmodo senior reporter Wired reporter Mat Honan had a bunch of his accounts hacked into over the weekend. Being the public figure in the tech community that he is, he was probably more likely than you or I to have this problem happen to him, and his Tumblr tales the tale of how quickly your digital life can get compromised. Honan writes:
Although embarrassing, Twitter was the least of it. In short, someone gained entry to my iCloud account, used it to remote wipe all of my devices, and get entry into other accounts too.
iPhone info: gone. iPad info: gone. Macbook Air info: gone. Personal Twitter accounts and accounts for Gizmodo and The Daily Dot: hacked. All this took place in about 15 minutes. Honan has since gained control over his devices and social media, but he may never get the data that was wiped from them. He traced the break in to, of all places “Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions.” Will impersonating a user become the next hack to watch out for? Not if Honan has anything to say about it. His case has been given top-priority status and he’s been working with Apple tech support to stop others from breaking into accounts the same way.
And the hacks don’t stop there – the news outlet Reuters had one of its Twitter accounts taken over this weekend. Tweets from @ReutersTech began sending out missives about Syria. From Reuters:
In the latest incident a series of 22 false tweets were sent purporting to be from Reuters News. Some of the tweets also carried false reports about Syrian rebel losses suffered in battles with Syrian government forces.
For now, the account has been suspended, while Twitter and Reuters look into the problem.
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