Convicted Hacker is a Geico Fan

This Information Week  article is called An Interview With A Convicted Hacker, and it’s pretty interesting.  First of all, the hacker in question is 23 years old.  I mean, wow.  To be only 23 and headed to federal prison…I think that’s quite an accomplishment (and why is it that hackers keep getting younger?  That kid who was the first to hack the iPhone was, like, 17). 

Secondly, this dude was part of a scam with VOIP phone services, and did most of the heavy lifting to pull things off.  Yet, he only netted $20,000 for his trouble.  Hey, somebody tell this kid that the local Waffle House pays management trainees almost twice that ($36,000).  Crime really doesn’t pay…at least not very well. 

Lastly, the hacker is quoted as saying, “It was so easy a caveman could do it.”  This makes me think he’s on Geico’s payroll to help push their series of cave man commercials (or ABC’s payroll, to help promote the show they are launching which is based on the Geico commercials).  But here’s the best thing you can get out of this article, and I quote this young felon:

“When you’ve got that many computers at your fingertips, you’d be surprised how many are insecure…I’d say 85% of them were misconfigured routers. They had the default passwords on them.”

People, the days of having default passwords on your computer, email accounts, servers, or wireless routers are over.  Don’t give some young whipper-snapper access to all your files just because you’re too lazy to change the password from “admin” to something more complicated. 

Actually,  Keith Rhodes, chief technologist at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, says it better than I ever could: 

“Default passwords are a silly problem,” said Rhodes, who is widely considered to be the federal government’s top hacker. “But they were able to take a silly flaw and turn it into a business. … It disappoints me, but I’m not surprised.”