Mat Honan
The Wired journalist whose digital life was wiped in about an hour in 2012 because someone wanted his three-letter Twitter handle.
The attackers needed no vulnerability in the usual sense. They called Amazon support and added a credit card to his account, called again and used that card to take the account over — which showed the last four digits of a different card. Those four digits were enough for Apple support to reset his iCloud password. From there his iPhone, iPad and MacBook were remotely wiped, his Gmail was hijacked and the Twitter account @mat was taken.
Honan wrote the definitive account himself, including conversations with one of the attackers. Amazon and Apple tightened their procedures within days. The lesson was an uncomfortable one: two companies' individually reasonable support policies combined into a back door. And the photos of his daughter weren't in any backup.