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Sony Hack Speaks To Proliferating Threat: Written by Administrator | 09 May 2011
Sony is run by a bunch of greedy morons who stupidly left their systems vulnerable to an attack by hackers: This is the conventional explanation of how the company finds itself bent into a familiar pose of contrition, following news that cyber-pirates breached its defenses, potentially gaining access to troves of valuable information -- credit card numbers, email addresses -- for more than 100 million customers.
If only life were so soothingly simple. The Sony data hack and the predictable pursuit of villains carries a dose of false comfort, implicitly affirming the assumption that someone must have fouled up to create such a menace to privacy and commerce; someone must have failed in a readily identifiable way, because this surely can't be the ordinary state of events. But the blame narrative masks an unsettling question: What if Sony did the best it could to protect itself, and the pirates still won? What if the company employed the best defenses available, yet they proved inadequate in the face of a decentralized and proliferating threat?
Sony has captured headlines because it is one of the world's most conspicuous consumer brands, and the recent attacks on its network have been both brazen and successful. But the list of companies that have been targeted by similar plots is lengthy and growing. Last month, the online marketing giant Epsilon confirmed that hackers made off with personal files relating to customers of Best Buy and J.P. Morgan Chase, among other firms. In February, officials at Nasdaq, the giant stock exchange, confirmed that hackers penetrated servers used to handle communications for some 300 major corporations. The breach did not affect stock trading, and resulted in no stealing of customer data, Nasdaq said.
Congress and assorted government offices collectively absorb 1.8 billion cyber attacks each month, according to Senate Sergeant-At-Arms Terrance Gainer, as cited by Politico. Over the last five months of 2009 alone, some 87 Senate offices and 13 Senate committees were on the receiving end of emails that contained malicious files, the Politico story detailed.
Russian hackers have been implicated in penetrating Citibank ATM systems to make off with cash.
Last week, as the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade convened to probe the public's vulnerability to cybersecurity breaches, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) kicked off the proceedings with some eye-catching numbers: In April alone, some 100 million records were put at risk through 30 data breaches at hospitals, insurance companies, universities, banks, airlines and government offices.
The hearing she oversaw was part of a public flaying faced by Sony in the wake of disclosures about the penetration of its popular PlayStation gaming network -- an episode Bono Mack referred to as "the great Brinks robbery of cyber-attacks." Far be it from anyone to dismiss the curative powers of an old-fashioned Washington flaying, but the search for simple villains seems misguided, as if more about sowing feelings of greater security than actual delivering it.
more to read here: Sony Hack Speaks To Proliferating Threat | RSS World Latest News
See how unsafe WE all are? Its not only Sony.
I think a lot of the blame has to come from the total collapse of US IT and computer job markets. There were more people officially working in IT in 1970 then there was in 2010. Where did all those computer egg heads and professionals go? Of course they turned to hacking and the underground cyber criminal market. There are more hackers than there are people fighting against them. The people who actually built the internet are ripping it down piece by piece. They are winning because they out number corporate and government IT departments. This is a war we cannot win unless things change.
