{"id":5460,"date":"2012-08-06T13:47:11","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T20:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/?p=5460"},"modified":"2015-02-04T11:12:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T19:12:58","slug":"4-security-lessons-learned-from-mat-honans-icloud-account-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/4-security-lessons-learned-from-mat-honans-icloud-account-hack\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Security Lessons Learned from Mat Honan’s iCloud Account Hack"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This past week, writer Mat Honan had the unthinkable happen<\/a>. Someone got into his iCloud account, and they were able to remotely wipe his iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air and delete his Google account that was attached to his iCloud account. The initial assumption was that this happened because the hacker brute-forced his way into Honan\u2019s account. After some further digging, it came to light that the hacker was simply able to use social engineering to trick Apple Support into resetting his password.<\/p>\n

As much as we like to trumpet the use of good passwords, this is one instance in which this would not have made a difference. You can use the best password in the world, but if someone can socially engineer you or someone from the site or service itself to reveal your password, it will make no difference. That isn\u2019t to say that strong passwords are not important; having a strong password<\/a> will protect you against the majority of common attacks. But you should definitely not bet the farm on a password.<\/p>\n

There are a number of questions that this brings up, of course:<\/p>\n