Yesterday, we report that Gizmodo's twitter account hijacked after hackers compromised the iCloud account of Mat Honan, a former Gizmodo employee. At the time it was assumed that the hackers had used bruteforcing attack , but it turns out that Apple gave the hackers access to his iCloud account.
"I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn’t password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions."Mat Honan said in the blog post.
"Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I’m back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were. "
“Social engineering” is a fancy word for tricking the person on the other end to do what you want by making them believe that they are you.
Even if you have Strong passwords , hackers can convince the tech support person that they are you, they can walk past all that security. Nothing can protect you from this kind of targeted attack.
