
26 Chapter 1 • Hacking Methodology
Theft of Identity
Another popular reason for hacking is for theft of identity. There is no dif-
ference whether the information is obtained by stealing mail through
the U.S. Postal Service or if the information is stolen over the Internet.
With theft of identity, an attacker would need to acquire certain pieces
of private information about their target victim. In addition to the vic-
tims’ name, this information could be any number of the following:
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Address
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Social security number
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Credit card information
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Date of birth
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Driver’s license number
These critical pieces of information can help an attacker to assume
the victims’ ...