2 min read
When you think about electronic security, what comes to mind?
Do you consider how vulnerable your customer credit cards are, or how easily someone can break into your on-line bank account?
These are the most profitable avenues of attack that thieves usually focus on, but occasionally, cybercriminals are motivated by something besides greed.
It could be that a hacker group thinks of themselves as some kind of social watch dog, and instead of targeting you financially, they target your image.
With the spread of social media, there are many avenues that a motivated hacker can take to cause you harm. For example, if you have a weak password protecting your Facebook account, then it is likely that with minimal effort someone could corrupt your wall and send horrific messages to all of your friends. Since it is coming from your account, it will look like something you did, when in actuality, it was a criminal who was simply posing as you.
This type of attack is not as uncommon as you might think.
Just recently, Burger King’s Twitter account was compromised for a short time with outrageous claims that McDonald’s took them over. There were over 80,000 followers of the burger giant who must have been confused when hackers broke into the account. Burger King apologized to its fans after the attack, and this incident was an unfair public relations nightmare because Burger King was the victim here. Yet they faced ridicule on the Internet because for awhile it looked like they gave up to McDonalds.
I wish this were an isolated incident, but it is becoming a more popular trend in the hacking world. Jeep suffered an attack that mirrors the Burger King incident closely.
In their case, the hackers made it appear that Cadillac had bought the car company, but the concept was the same.
How safe do you think your public presence is right now?
Do you use good password management or use complicated passwords to manage your social media accounts? Hackers are real and some of them are out to ruin the reputation of hard working folks who never meant anyone any harm. It would be in your best interest to manage your on-line accounts with the same diligence that you show your credit card or bank data.
