12 celebrities hacked!

Asif Dasl

Article

Could someone tell me what can be done with a SSN in the US? The website listed SSN, credit reports, past/current addresses, phone numbers. I thought they might be using all the same bank but it's different credit unions and banks. Just wondering what you guys can use a SSN for, cause over here we can use it on invoices for self-employed work and it's more or less harmless for someone to know it.

Feel like phoning up Trump and saying "Your fired!" - well you can leave him a message along with everyone else!!

webgeek

Looks like they need people who work in IT security on their payroll! Working for JayZ would def have its perks! lol

instant000

Social security numbers are DESIGNED for the purpose of the national social welfare program.

In the US, they get UTILIZED as a de-facto identification number. (see the problem already?)

As such, knowing someone's SSN and a few other pieces of information would be useful to a criminal, as your SSN often serves as a "primary key" to gobs of information about you.

ptilsen

SSN indeed gets used for authentication all the time. The irony is that authenticating entities request the last four digits of your social security to authenticate you, which are probably the second-least secure four numbers you could pick since you generally give them out all the time.

With an SSN and an address, you can impersonate someone for almost any purpose.

TheShadow

Generally the trinity of SSN, drivers license and mothers maiden name is all one needs to open credit accounts in your name and pretty much ruin you in short time. Crooks have even bought boats, houses etc. with just that information. Babies credit have been ruined before they even get a chance to use it with just the SSN since the tax code changes required a new born to get one back in the mid 1970's. Prior to that you applied for one when you first started earning income so it was easy to notice something was wrong.

As ptilsen pointed out the last four are used as a pseudo pin number. The first 3 tells what part of the country that you were born in.

Asif Dasl

Correction: 18 celebrities hacked!

Yeah I was thinking it must be pretty easy to open up a bank account over there. I was just reading these two articles [1] & [2]. Over here you need to be in the bank itself with a passport, drivers license and a utilty bill from your current address before they will open up a bank account and even then it'll take a couple of days. No pre-approved credit or anything.

Your passport is more important over here than your SSN..

Kindy scary that can happen to you out of the blue - I guess it's a pretty quick way to go to jail as well though!

antielvis

What can be done with an SSN? Well I can't say if it's true or not, but recently hackers attacked the Westboro Baptist Church a few months ago after they threatened to picket the Sandy Hook funerals. Rumour was hackers not only used their credit they also had them declared legally dead.

My guess is that much of this wasn't "hacking" in the technical sense, but more reconnaissance work. For the uninititated, reconnaissance work is usually the collection and analyization of data by your red team prior to a hack. The amount of information that is available out there is quite astonishing.

TheShadow

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Correction: 18 celebrities hacked!

Your passport is more important over here than your SSN..

Kindy scary that can happen to you out of the blue - I guess it's a pretty quick way to go to jail as well though!

More people have passports now since the US closed the Canadian and Mexican open border crossings after the 9-11 bombings. America is such a big chunk of land that the majority of Americans live most or all of their life without ever getting a passport. I got my first one at 26 and that was after spending six years in the military where my ID card was all I needed. My employer had me get one since they wanted all their engineers to have one just in case we needed to travel to a customer site.

As far as going to jail, the big scam over the last few years is filing tax returns and getting overage refunds before the real owner files the real tax return. Our IRS has been sending out millions of dollars to the wrong people for several years and are now trying to crack down and catch people.