Ladies and gentlemen. I’ve been hacked… No I didn’t leave my Face Book open. Like legit hackers got into my account and did some damage. My school email, which has a dedicated team of IT professionals, could not fend off a skilled team of hackers. They got into my email, sent a bunch of phishing scams, and changed my name to CSS President. They rooted around my drive account, and also changed the password for my personal blog. They got my account number to my bank and did all of this in less than five minutes…They were logged in for a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes.
They hacked my email while my home computer was in use. I was working from six until about two am last night and these hackers did their worst, starting at 9:30. This is a wake up call people. The main objective for these hackers is to remain undetected and they succeeded WHILE MY COMPUTER WAS BEING USED BY ME.
Here is the real kicker: This website was hacked! What do these hackers want with my personal blog? I have no money accounts connected. Why in the world was it necessary to Brute-force my account and then change the password to my WordPress account?
This is a serious wake up call though. The helpful IT crowd here at Saint Skull really tried to find out how they got in. I told them that I try to be conscious of the security of my accounts and they were happy I had any idea at all about the safeguards against this real issue. Our digital lives are fragile and it is so easy to get a hold of one account’s password and cause damage when there are too few characters and the same password across many accounts. Imagine having one key for the door to your house, and your car that also opened your safety deposit box. Don’t make copies of the same key and make it easy for hackers. Because there are teams of hackers out there that are dedicated to exploiting complacent people’s digital lives.
These are some tips to have better security:
1. Have a different password for everything
2. The longer password the better
3. Scan every download
4. Don’t be unaware like I was.
Skills Give Life To Dreams 