Page 150 - Cyber Defense eMagazine December 2023

Passwords In the Air

By Gautam Hazari, Chief Technology Officer, Sekura.id

Imagine, you are sitting in a café, sipping the skillfully crafted coffee by the barista, with your
laptop placed on the table in front. You open the screen and look around to see if no one is
around “shoulder surfing”, and then you open your email, type in the user ID and the password
on the keyboard and access your email. You didn’t notice that a few tables behind, there is
someone looking at their phone, as their phone is kept on the table, and why would you care? A
few minutes later, you close your screen and focus back on the coffee as you don’t want it to get
cold. But something happened between sips; someone is accessing your email, someone is
initiating a password reset for your banking account, or social media account. An account
takeover is in action.

How did this happen? No, this was not someone accessing the laptop or sniffing into the Wi-Fi
connection. Remember that person a few tables behind looking at their phone? The microphone

Cyber Defense eMagazine – December 2023 Edition 150
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