There is a series of negative news that becomes common, unfortunately, because we have reached the consensus that certain problems are less than others, we tend to ignore them. This provides a social cover for crackers, who are dedicated to stealing confidential information obtained from large companies and institutions to sell it to the highest bidder.
For some time now we are seeing how attacks by hackers, companies and public and private institutions are becoming more common. In a world where more and more information is stored on the internet, it is completely normal that cybercrime has increased. After all, a person’s data, although not important, is important in large quantities for market research and social manipulation programs.
Crackers make a killing stealing data with impunity
This week we have seen two reports of data theft caused by different computer crackers in different parts of the world. A recent case has been that of the multinational Acer, which has seen 160 GB stolen from its servers in the form of confidential product documents, binaries, technical manuals, product keys, program versions, etc. Come on, whoever has entered Acer has had the entire month of February to steal everything he wanted and more. Now the hacker is holding the company for the information. This is a company that has already suffered several security breaches in the past.
And no, it is not an exclusive problem of Acer, it has happened to the rest and it seems that the demand to put the information on the Internet is not being answered with the responsibility to protect it. Without going any further, one of the most important hospitals in Barcelona recently had an attack of this type, disrupting the schedule of visits and operations with how dangerous this is for the health of people with a serious illness. And all due to the fact that while the whole world watches the cuteness that ChatGPT does.
What we do not understand is the habit of having all servers connected to the Internet, including those with sensitive and confidential information. It would be understood if there was some encryption system in the way that would allow the files to be encoded to only make them if they had the necessary elements to be able to read the information. At the end of the day, we are talking about a level of carelessness worth taking our heads off and this will continue as long as the obligation to keep data secure is not given importance.
Things could be much worse than expected
Guilt does not exempt from responsibility, in the sense that the crime is entering to steal confidential information on a server. This does not mean that users at the individual level, as well as public and private elements, do not have to carry out methods to ensure that data is not accessed by crackers at the first opportunity. Of course, the payment for making these mistakes is too low and the level of damage cannot be measured. Worst? When not only is the problem not solved or not given importance, but it is not properly penalized in order to safeguard malpractice and it would be time not to ignore the problem.
