[epaik]

It's easy to forget that social engineering is one of the oldest and easiest way for a hacker to get access to a system.

[mturmon]

So true. Speculation in the original comment thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337938) included MITM attacks, keyloggers, sleeper programs left over from an earlier (known) breakin, brute force, etc.

Most of the ideas batted around were technical in nature and somewhat advanced.

[eslaught]

And also easy to forget that the level of verification required by most alternative authentication schemes is significantly weaker than the original login mechanism.