The Surprisingly Simple Methods Behind the Biggest Hacks
Why gaining access to Twitter was easy
A while back I read the autobiography of Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who worked on the atomic bomb with Einstein. The book is a series of anecdotes: Stories about the time Feynman made an elevator for ants, or when he accompanied the ballet on his bongos.
In one chapter Feynman writes about the year and a half he spent cracking safes at Los Alamos. When he finds a safe he isn’t able to crack, he guesses the combination and gets it right on his second try. Eventually, he comes across a safe that is impervious to his tricks. A professional locksmith is called, but before drilling the lock, the locksmith cracks the combination. Feynman is enthralled and asks how he did it, only to find that the locksmith is in awe of him. “You’re Feynman,” he says, “the great safecracker! I want to learn how to crack a safe from you.” Feynman is confused. “But you opened it! You must know how to crack safes.” The locksmith admits he has no special abilities: “I know that the locks come from the factory set at 25–0–25 or 50–25–50, so I thought, ‘Who knows; maybe the guy didn’t bother to change the combination,’ and the second one worked.”
This story came to my mind last week when reading about the Twitter hacker who took over a…
