"Hollywood portrays hackers as superpowered math geniuses who can intimidate computers into giving them whatever they want through intense keyboard mashing. Even outside of movies, they are feared as something like mysterious and powerful wizards -- the infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick was ordered to never use any networked technology more advanced than a pay phone, for fear that he could whistle a tone that would start a nuclear war.

But in reality, almost every "hacking" exploit that you hear about compromising some database or other is done with very simple methods that, many times, require no computer at all.