Hacking Made Easy was originally published on March 01, 2007.


Hopefully after getting out of college, most of us have matured past drawing dude parts on passed-out roommates. Now, I don't mean to imply that I've matured beyond that point, just that I hope you have.

It seems I'm in the same boat as Bryan F. and some of his coworkers. A new guy who we'll call Bob had recently moved into the cube right next to Bryan's. Bob was a nice guy, but he had one fatal flaw: he'd always walk away from his computer without locking it.

Every time Bob walked off, someone would change something on his computer. The most common change was to set his IE home page to <companyname>sucks.com. Now, pobody's nerfect, and as such, most of us have probably forgotten to lock our computers once or twice. And most of us would probably react appropriately: blushing, maybe a few tears, then resetting the homepage to <companyname>doesnotsuck.com. Not Bob, though.

In a panic, Bob shouted "I think my computer has been hacked!" which was met with stifled laughter throughout the department. Just as Bryan was getting up to tell him what had happened, Bob called IT security.

"No, I've never forgotten to lock my computer," Bob said. "Yes, I know how important it is to lock the computer... No, I haven't given out my password... OK, so I just go into 'Internet Options' to change it back? Got it."

Bryan continued listening to Bob's side of the conversation for a few more minutes. When the call finally wrapped up, Bob got up for a drink of water. Bryan peeked over into Bob's cube and saw an unlocked computer, so he walked over, pulled up the IE options...

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