One of the sources I used to research this book was an unofficial manual for a popular fee-based information service. Throughout that book, the author continuously made references to her pet cat, her love of Philadelphia soft pretzels, her favorite football team, her husband and children, and her newly acquired
interest in computers. Not only did references to these aspects of her life abound in the text, they also appeared in illustrations of the serv-ice's "Find" command, sample messages and sam-ple letters.
I knew the author's name, of course. I knew she had a membership on this system, and I knew about her life. It was insanely simple to get her per-sonal ID number on the system and, yes, within two dozen password guesses, to access the service under her account. She has since taken my advice and changed her password.
This isn't an isolated example! Every day you and I read newspaper articles, magazine columns, and books - in which the authors give away their computer addresses so readers can respond. Yesterday I heard a radio talk show host give out his CompuServe address for the large listening audience who didn't get the chance to speak out on the air! We know enough about many of these authors and others to be able to make educated guesses of their passwords. Even if an author doesn't mention personal details in the book, there's usually an "About the Author" section to turn to for facts. Many computer books are written by college professors;
naturally you'll know what college they're at, and so you have a lead to an account. If the sample program segments they list en-tail baseball trivia, you've got a good idea where to begin a brute force siege.
With all of this said, I want you to realize this is for informational purposes only. I made the above remarks only to point out some of the lax security around anyone in the public eye. Don't get any funny ideas about breaking my passwords!
Another trick is to look in Who's Who books. Almost all industries have a yearly Who's Who published. Many of these are vanity affairs: people pay to get a writeup about themselves listed. You can get good data from these, and if you can't get enough good data, print up your own official-looking Who's Who form and mail it to the person you have in mind at the company. Make sure the accompanying letter states that once they fill out the form, their entry will be included free of charge in the eventual book, and they will receive one copy of the book, free. This will help ensure that they mail you back the form. It also ensures you get good data to help you crack their passwords.
One more helpful subterfuge, this one involv-ing socializing with cronies at the company. Call up an office and talk to a receptionist or anyone who knows everyone's gossip. Say you're from a new trade magazine specializing in that business's field of endeavor. Ask for the names of all the major department heads, and their secretaries, so you can send them a free trial subscription. Then call back and talk to each of their secretaries. Have them fill out "market research" cards, again for some prize, like a free subscription or a clock radio or something. Typical marketing questions for trade magazine subscribers include inquiries about schooling, degrees held, industry awards, trade association memberships, military service, salary range, and length of service at the company. As the conversation continues, start asking about hobbies and outside interests, favorite sports, names of kids and spouse, and home address. These too are acceptable questions for a
market research surveyor to ask; they are also valuable possible password leads.
The short version of this is to call up, say you're one of the assistant editors for a trade magazine, and you're trying to find interesting people in the field. "Do you know of anyone there who has done anything at all spectacular, or has any particularly unusual hobbies?" You might get a "no," but keep pressing: "Anyone
with special talent? Musical tal-ent, for instance?" Keep going like this; eventually you'll hit upon something, and you can use the above tricks to find out more about that person than you ever thought you could.
Uncovering a subject's interests is called making up a personality profile or, for hackers, a password profile. The technique is done whenever the hacker has a specific individual in mind, whose computers the hacker wants to crack. If you wanted to read the e-mail and other private files of some head honcho at a corporation, you would go find reports of said honcho in the media, see what he or she likes, and go from there. One popular strata-gem, mentioned by Hugo Cornwall in his Hacker's Handbook, recognizes the fact that often a chief per-son in an organization is given an account to dem-onstrate the new computer system, under the as-sumption that setting up a new account is too diffi-cult or time consun-dng for the busy leader to do on his or her own. This account will of course have a natural English password, something of either the
easily-guessed variety, or something from the boss's list of interests. ("Say, Mr. Larsen likes fishing, doesn't he? Put in 'FISH' as the password!") So let's suppose you know a person's hobbies or interests: From there, how do you proceed?
To start, you could go to a library and get all the books you can on that subject. Then make up word banks from the glossaries and indices. People like to use big and (they think) obscure names/words from their coveted subject which they think no one else would ever think of. So you get students of literature using names for passwords, like "Euripides," "Aeschylus," and in general, a mess of lengthy technical terms.
Make up word lists, try them out, and if all else fails you can go on to a new password type. Just because someone's a doctor doesn't mean his pass-word will be "pericardiocentesis." People's lives are composed of many subjects, their occupation being just one.
