Abstract

In October, thousands of usernames and passwords belonging to Hotmail users were posted publicly online, and anyone could have taken them, logged into the accounts and done something with them. Gmail and Yahoo! were also targeted. Terry Zink asks: how did the hacker(s) gain access to all of these accounts and usernames? Should we be afraid that someone will guess our passwords? Why did they do it? What did they do with it? And should we worry about it happening to us?