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Hackception?
Monday 25th February 2013 | Suzanne
Hacking: it’s a phenomenon that seems to have taken over the tech world these past few weeks, and not lightly either. Recently some fairly high-profile hacks have made the news, and not only have Facebook, Microsoft and Apple suffered a blow, but Twitter as well. Ironically, even online hacktivist group ‘Anonymous’ has fallen victim and got a taste of their own medicine.
To anyone who has been targeted by Anonymous’ before this must be highly entertaining, but for the organisation itself it has obviously been a huge embarrassment. As a group that scares others by threatening to hack their databases and expose information, having its Twitter hacked is not exactly ideal. Anonymous, however, was not the only group that fell victim to the Twitter hacks, other high profile twitter accounts such as Burger King and the Chrysler owned ‘jeep twitter’ were targeted as well.
After the hacking incidents, Graham Cluley, senior consultant at the security firm ‘Sophos’ urged users to make their passwords more complicated. According to him, even Anonymous has been hacked due to a poor use of passwords. Most likely, the organisation has been either using the same password at several places or has been using a password which has been quite easy to crack. Whatever might have caused this wave of online hacks, it has definitely been an eye opener, showing us it can happen to the best of us, even those who master the art completely and deem themselves as being untouchable. Obviously a clear case of ‘hackception‘ right there.
By Suzanne Alblas
