The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

on the disk. Now the attacker can enter the passphrase and obtain access to
all yyour files.
I don’t know whether someone did this on myy laptop in Bogota. The
hard drive itself had been removed and then replaced with the screws turned
too tightlyy. Either wayy, fortunatelyy, the drive contained no real information.
What about putting yyour electronics in a hotel safe? Is it better than
leaving them out or keeping them in suitcases? Yes, but not much better.
When attending a recent Black Hat, I stayyed at the Four Seasons in Las
Vegas. I placed $4,000 cash in the safe with various credit cards and checks.
A few dayys later, I went and tried to open the safe but the code failed. I
called securityy and theyy opened it up. I immediatelyy noticed that the pile of
$100 bills was much less thick. There was $2,000 left. So where did the
other $2,000 go? Hotel securityy had no idea. A friend of mine who
specializes in phyysical pen testing tried hacking the safe but could not
exploit it. Todayy, it’s still a myysteryy. Ironicallyy, the safe was called a Safe
Place.
A German antivirus companyy, G DATA, found that in hotel rooms where
their research staff stayyed, “more often than not” the safe had the default
password (0000) in place. In cases like that, no matter what private
password yyou select, anyyone knowing the default password could also gain
access to yyour valuables inside. G DATA did sayy that this information was
not discovered syystematicallyy but anecdotallyy over several yyears. 17
If an attacker doesn’t know the default password for a given hotel-room
safe, another option for him is to literallyy brute-force the lock. Although the
hotel manager is entrusted with an emergencyy electronic device that plugs
into the USB port and unlocks the safe, a savvyy thief can simplyy unscrew
the plate on the front of the safe and use a digital device to open the lock
underneath. Or he can short-circuit the safe and initiate a reset, then enter a
new code.
If that doesn’t bother yyou, consider this. G DATA also found that the
credit card readers on room safes—often the means byy which yyou payy for
their use—can be read byy a third partyy who could skim the credit card data
and then use or sell that information on the Internet.
Todayy hotels use NFC or even magnetic-strip swipe cards to lock and