"It really is more of a human problem than a technical problem," Dan Kaminisky of Dox Para Research said at the world's premier hacker conference, DefCon, which ended in Las Vegas on Sunday.
"We could do a better job making it clear how people can make themselves safe.
We can't stop them from shooting themselves in the foot.
"
Computer network managers at the conference confided that workers routinely left passwords on notes taped to machines or under keyboards and shared supposedly secret access codes with co-workers.
Celebrity hotel heiress Paris Hilton had a trove of contact numbers for famous friends raided by someone who hacked their way into her mobile telephone using a predictable default password, the name of her pet, DefCon attendees joked.
One conference room at the casino where DefCon devotees gathered had a "Wall of Sheep," that bore countless names and passwords "sniffed" from unsecured computers via the Internet.
A popular T-shirt among DefCon attendees was one bearing a