Man I Feel Like A Woman
October 13th, 2008 by Brian Honan
Marie Boran from The SiliconRepublic.com challenged me recently to steal her identity. I had to work within the following parameters;
- I could do nothing illegal
- I could only use information gleaned from online sources
- I could not contact or collaborate with any of her friends or colleagues.
So to this end our keyboards at dawn challenge began and I fired up Google to see what I could find out about Marie. Suffice it to say that after much searching and cross referencing I was able to gather enough information to build up a false identity in her name. The information I got included
- Her name
- Her date of birth
- Her father’s name
- Her Mother’s name
- Her home address
- Her education details
- Her professional details
- Personal information on what her likes and hobbies were and also what blusher she likes to wear.
Marie has provided a write up of the challenge on The SiliconRepublic.com.
For those of you outside of Ireland would the above information be enough to steal the identity of someone in your country?
Nice piece, Brian.
I like the way the journalist admitted her cynical “it’ll never happen to me” attitude but, like Jeremy Clarkson, was forced to review her position when faced with the evidence. It’s a good thing you’re “one of the nice guys” or maybe Marie would have made an unwitting charitable donation like Clarkson. Ha ha.
I’m currently polishing-off an awareness module on social engineering, and will be quoting from the piece in SiliconRepublic I’m sure.
Just one thing though, that stripy bag really doesn’t suit you …
Cheers,
Gary
It was a cool project to work on Gary and more challenging than I thought. Marie was quiet good at protecting her online details and it was through a lot of persistence on my part that I got her date of birth, which as you know is a key piece of information to steal someone’s identity.
What is interesting from the project was that armed with the information I got I could have stolen her identity and caused a lot of damage. Note that I did not have her bank details or credit card details but the detials I got were damaging enough. It will certainly make me think twice when I read the next press release about a stolen uncencrypted laptop not being a risk to customers because it did not have their bank details on it.
It is a pity the stripes were not vertical they would have been a lot more slimming
B
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