Conner

I have always found the world of computer hacking very interesting. I remember reading about a famous hacker named Kevin Mitnick a few years ago and being fascinated. What really intrigued me was how Mitnick went about hacking. He focused on “social engineering” at first  and I don’t think the average person would’ve guessed that or even known what it is. I guess a basic definition of social engineering is: manipulating people to gain information from them. Using computers can help greatly in this effort because people put so much of their lives online. But it is interesting to think that I may be able to obtain your password based on riffling through your facebook photos and guessing your password based on particular interests. I’m sure that there are thousands of people who do just that.

Reading the article by Matt Honan on passwords I became a little scared. It’s weird to think that someone could steal all of your information like that and inconvenience you so quickly. I think of the first password that I ever created and how it was an interesting choice. It was just something I saw off of a book that was lying around the first time I created an AOL password. The passwords that I have had since then do have a personal connecting but they all involve random numbers. Hopefully I am safe but those articles scare me.

I remember back when I was in High School people always said that Apple computers are superior because “they don’t get viruses.” I always thought that was ridiculous and I find it funny that their cloud computing is so vulnerable. But I guess there is also a new wrinkle in all of this security stuff. The idea that these giant tech companies cannot create a secure the information they have is scary. If Apple can’t do it then who can? Or is it more of an indifference from these companies’? And in what ways are these companies liable? I guess the only thing that may answer these questions is time.