Written by Karen | 05/02/14 00:00
It was mentioned last year was the worst year for data security being hacked. Is it true? The American Online Trust Alliance announced they estimated that over 740 million online records were exposed in 2013.
Firstly consider Adobe, 150 million exposed account credentials were exposed, leading to secondary breaches all over the Internet. In an official statement, research revealed that more than 150 million user IDs and passwords were stolen, including approximately 38 million active users.
Secondly, Living Social.com. This instance is unique as it was one of the first major breaches affecting a big consumer website and included encrypted password theft. Fifty million records were obtained leaving the hackers knowing passwords, names and email addresses, allowing them to be able to break into accounts on other websites.
Lastly quoted as the worst data breach of 2013, you guessed it, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, leaks the extent of the U.S. intelligence community’s Internet surveillance. This data breach brought the biggest headlines from all over the world and flagged security into everyone’s mind, raising global issues for data protection and security.
On a smaller security scale but one story that I particularly thought interesting, was the story of Naoki Hiroshima’s Twitter username hacking,
story here. Naoki held a significant twitter username, @N, that was highly in demand; she was offered $50,000 for the account. This blog shows how easy it is to get past consumer security questions and take over a personal identity. The extortionist got past the likes of PayPal who pride themselves as a trusted and safe supplier ‘Build trust with PayPal branding on your website’.
While this is only one story of, I assume many from only last year, it raises an important issue for this year.