I’ve written before about online safety and privacy (and specifically How Facebook Sells Your Friends). St. Louis Today has reported that some Missouri legislators have learned this lesson the hard way… with five Missouri House members having their Facebook accounts hacked since the session began on January 5th.
How IT specialists have not yet pinpointed the cause, but signs point to a "potentially gaping computer security hole." The Missouri House provides a free, open wireless network for House visitors and legislators that "serves as a virtual welcome mat for hackers". Each of the hacking victims had used the open wi-fi system recently.
One hacker posted the following to Rep. Donna Lichtenegger (R- Jackson):
"I love lobbyist (sic) All the free food and stuff you get. This job is awesome!"
Clearly, this type of attack can wreak havoc on a politician’s carefully crafted messaging and the political damage can be immediate and long lasting.
St. Louis Today found that some legislators used the public wi-fi almost exclusively and many did not even know how to access the secure network for legislators.
Read more: Facebook accounts of four Mo. legislators are hacked [Rebecca Berg at stltoday.com]
[More on Online Safety]
(c) Copyright 2011 Brett A. Emison
Brett Emison is currently a partner at Langdon & Emison, a firm dedicated to helping injured victims across the country from their primary office near Kansas City. Mainly focusing on catastrophic injury and death cases as well as complex mass tort and dangerous drug cases, Mr. Emison often deals with automotive defects, automobile crashes, railroad crossing accidents (train accidents), trucking accidents, dangerous and defective drugs, defective medical devices.
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