In lieu of the Edward Snowden inspired paranoia about online privacy, Adam Penenberg, a journalist for Pando Daily, challenged a hacker to try to get as much information about him as possible, simply by using a PC. The man he challenged, Nick Percoco, considers himself a “white hat hacker” and has been breaking into companies (at their request) for some years now. The journalist in question had no idea what he was in for.

Perocco maintains that he would never use his skills for crime – despite the fact that he has naturally undetectable fingerprints. Not only does he attack computer vulnerabilities, Percoco performs on-site intrusions to test a companies’ security. Over the years he has performed hundreds physical break-ins, slipping into hospitals or insurance companies – whoever would pay him.

This time, Perrocco was being tested in order to reveal just how vulnerable we are to hacking.

The answer? We’re utterly defenseless.

Perocco easily found Penenberg’s name, address, computer brand, and the location of his wife’s pilates studio – just by gleaning his social media profiles. This enabled Perocco to make a full on attack on Penenberg’s privacy.

After having failed to hack into Peneberg’s computer with a phony email attachment, the hackers emailed his wife, who downloaded the attachment and boom – they had access to everything on her computer.

On Charlotte’s machine were our family’s W2s, which included our social security numbers as well as our income and all of our deductions, paperwork and copies of credit card and banking statements. They also came upon a password to our home router. More frightening, they discovered her password and log in to our Chase online banking account.

This basically opened up all doors. The hackers were soon able to tweet from Penenberg’s account, steal his money, and lock his iPhone.

As Seth said last week, when it comes to the internet, none of us are safe. Read the rest of the story here – it gets worse.

[Source : Pando Daily]