Читать книгу Cybersecurity For Dummies - Joseph Steinberg - Страница 128

One of the ways computer systems verify that people are who they claim to be is by asking questions to which few people other than the legitimate party would know the correct answers. In many cases, someone who can successfully answer “How much is your current mortgage payment?” and “Who was your seventh grade science teacher?” is more likely to be the authentic party than an impersonator.

But the all-knowing Google engine undermines such authentication. Many pieces of information that were difficult to obtain quickly just a few year ago can now be obtained almost instantaneously via a Google search. In many cases, the answers to security questions used by various websites to help authenticate users are, for criminals, “just one click away.”

While more advanced sites may consider the answer to security questions to be wrong if entered more than a few seconds after the question is posed, most sites impose no such restrictions — meaning that anyone who knows how to use Google can undermine many modern authentication systems.