Everyone has probably heard by now about the Google/China hacking incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. The issue revolved around a security hole within Internet Explorer and has raised a number of questions as to whether people should stop using it in favour of more secure browsers. Before going into the discussion some important points need to be brought up:
- the attack was a well crafted social engineering scam aimed at several different companies including Google
- specially crafted emails were sent to specific individuals at these companies purporting to be from legitimate sources
- the emails contained a link to a website that downloaded the malicious code to the users computer through a security hole in Internet Explorer
- Microsoft has issued a hotfix to patch the hole
More and more everyday you hear about people who’ve had their computers hacked and pieces of their identity stolen. Whether it be the password for online banking or something as simple as their facebook username and password this can be a major issue and people need to take more action to protect themselves. Seems every site on the internet needs a username and password to access and if you’re like me, I have so many passwords that I forget which one goes where. The solution was to either use the same password for everything or write them down somewhere, both of these are a major no-no when it comes to security. Security best practices dictate that passwords should be at least 4 – 8 characters long, contain a combination of upper case, lower case and special characters and be changed on a regular basis. Unfortunately, my memory is really bad and there would be no way for me to remember all the passwords needed for all my accounts. It’s been stated several times over the years “Privacy is dead, get over it”; you don’t need to “get over it” you have to learn what’s needed to protect yourself.