DOJ: Man sextorted women after giving up password reset clues, like pets’ names
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Federal agents arrested a former NASA contractor at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday, accusing him of sextortion.
According to the August 28 indictment, Richard Gregory Bauer, 28, used Facebook to send questions to his victims for his purported "human societies class." He asked his marks for things like their pets' names and where their parents met-queries that are often similar, if not identical, to prompts used in password-reset tools.
After doing so, he would seemingly use those passwords to access their accounts, sometimes stumbling upon nude or semi-nude photographs. Sometimes, he would convince victims to install malware that included keyloggers, enabling him to capture logins and passwords.
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