If this data breach case was made for TV, it would probably be streaming on Netflix. Perhaps this storyline finds its way into a "Black Mirror" episode. That series takes viewers through a bizarre, high-tech multiverse where humanity's greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide. You decide for yourself after reading about this case—which features a right wing social media site CEO and the hack of some 40 million posts; a message from former President Trump that he never actually sent; and a transgender hacktivist on a social justice quest who claims she didn't hack anything in this case. Gab bills itself as a "free speech social network," and it made significant membership gains in conservative circles in January when competing site Parler was pulled offline.

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server.

One day you receive an email from an unknown sender. You open it curiously, only to find two attached NUDE images of you. Sounds like a thriller drama plot? It is not. The alleged suspect turned out to be a 19 year old who studied in the same high school and had hijacked her webcam.

If your password is on this list of 10, most common passwords , you need a new password. A hacker can use or generate files like this, which may readily be compiled from breaches of sites such as Ashley Madison. Usually passwords are not tried one-by-one against a system's secure server online; instead a hacker might manage to gain access to a shadowed password file protected by a one-way encryption algorithm, then test each entry in a file like this to see whether its encrypted form matches what the server has on record.