What's New: Hacking Sarah Palin's E-mail Account

Hackers easily broke into Vice Presidential nominee's personal e-mail account this week, using Yahoo!'s password recovery feature and a few minutes of research, which could yield lessons for all of us.

The group simply used Yahoo!'s password recovery feature, and did some research to find answers to the security questions. Her birthday was on Wikipedia, her hometown (Wasilla) is known, and ZIP codes are public knowledge. Knowing she met her husband in high school, the group eventually found that "Wasilla high" worked for that question.

The lesson? When setting up answers to security questions on your online accounts, avoid using answers that others can find out. If the system doesn't allow custom questions, consider providing fake answers. If you use the same fake answer on all sites, it should still be easy to remember.

Friday, Sep 19, 2008 11:30 am CDT

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