Disturbing Thing From a "Notorious Hacker"

Listened to lots of fascinating speakers at EG 2007, but none were more disturbing than Pablos Holman, a consultant who identifies himself as a "notorious hacker." Some highlights:

-- When he goes into a hotel room with a TV set connected to the hotel's network -- which would be any TV that lets you see movies on demand or pay your bill -- he can hack into it using his laptop and a cheap infrared gadget. Once in, he can see what every computer hooked to the network is doing. So if you're on your laptop in a room on another floor shopping on eBay, he can see that.

-- To show people how unsecure Wi-Fi networks are, he built a little robot that can wander into an area that has Wi-Fi, then roll up to a laptop user and display all the users passwords.

-- He was able to put a fake story on CNNMoney.

-- He demonstrated a gadget that can pick up credit card information from any one of the new cards that has an RFID chip. All he had to do was get the card within a few inches of the device and the card number and expiration date got sucked into his laptop.

Holman apparently uses his powers for good. Easy, though, to imagine lots of people like him who don't.

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