Once more into the breach: How hackers compromise websites like Apple's
Unless you happen to call the proverbial rock home, you’ve probably heard that Apple’s developer websites were recently hit by a hacking attack. Though the developer site has been inaccessible since last week, the company didn’t announce the intrusion until Sunday; as of this writing, the site remains down. That outage has resulted in considerable inconvenience for app developers, not to mention the poor IT people in Cupertino who have been working around the clock to deal with the breach.
According to the company, the attackers didn’t manage to get their hands on any sensitive information, but the fact remains that security hacks like this one happen with alarming frequency all over the Web, and one cannot help but wonder why websites seem to be so easy to break into.
The ABCs of computer hackery
Computers can be hacked using a variety of techniques, which typically fall into three categories: social engineering, software exploits, and hardware cracks.
Social engineering is the least technological member of this trio, although it’s by no means the least sophisticated. It works by extracting access credentials from an unsuspecting user, or acquiring them from an unscrupulous operator, such as a disgruntled employee. If you’ve been on the Internet for more than a day, you’ve probably been on the receiving end of a “phishing” email, which invites you to log on to a site that looks and feels like, say, your bank’s, but is in reality controlled by hackers who capture your username and password and then use it to help themselves to the money in your account.
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