We tracked down one hacker, 43-year-old Izzy Cash from 42 Gladstone Street in Coventry, who asked us not to reveal her identity.
Izzy said, 'I’m not a criminal! I became a hacker because it was the only way I could access my own bank account. I’ve been using online banking for years, but one day when I tried to log in I kept getting error messages. I rang the bank’s ironically titled ‘Helpline’, and after being kept on hold for 90 minutes I finally got through to someone and explained I couldn’t log in to my account. They said it was because they’d recently introduced new security measures, and I needed to create new a set of passwords to be able to access my account.'
Izzy continued, 'After taking me through some security questions, like what was my mother’s maiden name, my date of birth, the street I grew up in, my first pet, last school, blood type, star sign, eye colour, shoe size, age I lost my virginity and number of fillings, they said none of those answers were secure enough, as anyone who knew me might guess them. They made me create several new passwords, which couldn’t be the real answers to the security questions. Each password had to be 30 characters long, with one upper case letter, one number, one special symbol, one Roman numeral, one Egyptian hieroglyph, one rune, one mathematical symbol, one Chinese character, one letter in Morse code and a Wingding. I managed to come up with passwords which fit their criteria, but when I tried to access my account later I still couldn’t log in, because my computer keyboard doesn’t have half those symbols on it.'
Izzy went on to say, 'Rather than calling the 'helpline' again, I decided it would be easier to take an online course in computer hacking, so I could access my bank account to pay my gas bill. It’s surprisingly simple to hack my account, much more straightforward than using all those stupid passwords.'
Izzy has since been prosecuted by her bank, for stealing her own identity.
Image: 8385 | Pixabay