this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 87 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Holy shit. People have legit asked me this question. Although, I'm an IT professional and they didn't jump to that question just from building a PC.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (9 children)

When I got asked that once, I told them they should bring me their laptop. 10 minutes tops and I'll have access to their files. They really didn't know, if I was bluffing or not.

(I wasn't. The average laptop is genuinely that badly secured.)

[–] JDubbleu 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Almost every personal computer that isn't a MacBook is poorly secured due to the lack of filesystem encryption as a default. No one encrypts their data at rest, and as such you just have to pull their drive and read it with another computer. Hell, I don't encrypt my entire file system despite being aware of this because of the inconvenience of added boot time, but everything that matters is encrypted and backed up across multiple devices.

The best thing anyone can do is keep the amount of critical, digital data they have to a minimum, keep that data encrypted and backed up, and use a password manager properly. That alone makes it exceedingly unlikely you will ever be a victim of cybercrime solely because you're more of a pain in the ass to compromise than 99.9% of the world.

I personally have almost 10TB of data between all my systems, but of that maybe 10 MB is actually valuable to anyone but me.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Windows encrypts by default now. I don't know if any Linux distros do by default but it was certainly option for me to enable it at install time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure bitlocker is enabled by default since Windows 11 rolled, to my understanding it's part of the reason they now require Microsoft accounts for device on boarding.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Lol Windows user password is the digital equivalent of a pad lock, it only keeps honest people honest lmfaoo

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Well, can you hack Facebook?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In the U.S. it already counts as hacking when you scrape data... so yeah, sure.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

YOu mean I have been hacking instagram for a year O.o

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I can guarantee you that someone in the Facebook HQ has their password on a sticky note. I bet they even think having it stuck under their keyboard means it's hidden.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So... are you going to *hack Facebook or what?

[–] [email protected] 50 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The greatest hacker of all time.

Just follow him

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Grandma is just recruiting for a hacking group.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Straight out of Watch Dogs: Legion

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

The GHackerz, no one would suspect a bunch of old granny's running an elite top tier hacking group lmao

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can hack Facebook.

hits F12

Look, I just broke into their CODE!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

'now hack into Dianne's account and unfriend her kids'

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Had a random guy that I spoke to at a bar ask me if I could hack a university to forge a degree for him when I told him I work in IT. Even if I could do something like that, it seems like a really risky and unethical thing to do for some rando at a bar.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

I once had the knowledge how you could hack a government system to get free fishing licenses. Seemed like a high risk / low reward type of deal though.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

It was a test. You failed 😔

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

I could probably do that in LibreOffice. Like, how hard is it to print out a thing that says "BACHELOR'S OF SCIENCE" in that stupid old school font.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So he was asking in earnest? Lol

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Most of us older computer nerds and coders certainly tried to hack Facebook back in the 00's. To answer Grandma's question, no, we cannot.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Back in undergrad, before Facebook went HTTPS only, I would setup "free wifi" and steal people's cookies for shits and giggles. Use the cookies to authenticate with FB and send random messages to people.

Looking back, I probably shouldn't have been doing that. Definitely illegal.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They were just barely starting to get serious about legislating cyber security, so you were only maybe breaking some laws. I remember in the 90's it was a lawless land. There were no laws against hacking, or at least none that anyone understood, and most sites had terrible security. I gained access to someone's Hotmail once just by trying "anon/anon" as a user/pass combo. I also used to gain access to e-commerce customer databases just by googling certain SQL strings. I'd poke around and then send the webmaster an email letting them know their site was vulnerable.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There isn't a law against hacking but I am sure there are other applicable laws when you do harm while hacking.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There is, it's called CFAA and is absurdly broad. Pretty much any time you

knowingly accessed a computer without authorization

it's technically illegal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So you're telling me every time I stole my sister's phone and took goofy selfies with it?? Straight to jail???

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Seems that way yeah. Naturally this sort of law is selectively enforced to nab whoever they have a problem with though so probably your sister doesn't have the clout to bring you to justice.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, you horrible criminal monster.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Firefox had a plug in for it!!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Firesheep!

That plugin and others that came after, was one of the things that finally got websites to start using https on everything, not just the log in page.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So you know how to crochet? Can you make me a bulletproof vest?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I've gotten this from friends.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I got this from a service technician once. He was like, "So you know code? Say I had my wife's phone, but not the password. How could I get into her Facebook Messenger??"

And I was like, "... So can you fix my drain line, or no?"

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

Sounds like that guy needs a marriage counselor, not a hacker.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (10 children)

I just get teased by my computer guy because I still use WinZip. Apparently that’s now considered “retro”. Ow my dignity.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Mr. Robot (2015)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

"I've tried, you can't" to just end the conversation.

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