Security Breaches 2012. Lessons To Learn

Updated October 6, 2023
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The digitalization and mobilization of modern world lead to the situation when we store almost all our personal and business data in different databases in phones, pcs, and online services. But information is power. That’s why with the increase of electronic information, more and more attacks are made on the databases. And some of them have been rather successful. Especially this year.

However, every cloud has a silver lining and we should learn from others’ mistakes and from the problems solved. So, what is the top security breaches happed in 2012 and what lessons can we learn from them?

Yahoo Hacking

Hacking of Yahoo is probable one of the greatest in the whole history of the Internet. About 450k of usernames with passwords has been stolen by the group D33D. However, Yahoo says that most of the data stolen was fake only 5% of all the information had any value.

Lesson to learn:  email services should increase the level of security and data encryption, to test regularly their systems. Ordinary users shouldn’t trust free mail services, especially if they use email for sending any business information.

LinkedIn

The first notifications about the breach came from a Russian user on one forum.  He said that he loaded about 6 million passwords of LinkedIn users. And only after that the service confirmed the breach.

Lesson to learn: stop using SHA-1 encryption algorithm as it is very weak; constant monitoring of the security is a must.

DNS Changer virus

The virus could destroy the DNS and as a result 277k computer all over the world were affected by it. The expert couldn’t fix it and FBI decided to install 2 new DNS servers and to disable the one that was spearing the virus.

Lesson to learn: sometimes there are unsolvable problems that require the total change of the system.

Malware App in Google Play

About 100k of phones has been affected by this malware application that could be freely loaded from the official Play market.

Lesson to learn: Google has a very easy check for apps to get at the market. So, choose the applications and check the developers as well. Don’t trust third-party apps.

Zappos

About 24 mln names, emails, phone numbers, last four digits of credit card numbers, and encrypted passwords have been stolen after the attack of a Zappo server. The hacker used the internal network to get the information.

Lesson to learn: not only outside security should be at high level, but also inner one.

Global Payment Systems

In March 7 mln consumer records, 1.5 mln credit card recorgs including, was stolen from North American processing system. Moreover, during the investigation it was found that it wasn’t the first case of hitting the base.

Lesson to learn: all the databases should be checked regularly for break-ins.

It is not a full list of the security breaches that have happed this year, but they are the most significant one. They show us that our security systems aren’t perfect and shouldn’t be totally trusted. I hope the lesson will be learned and in 2013 the number of hacks will be less.

Author Bio:- Katerina Merzlova, a copywriter from Intellectsoft, an iOS development company.I like to read, write and even listen about technology, especially mobile one. If you want to read more about the team I work with, visit us or follow us on Twitter @Intellectsoft

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