Cyber Security

Cloud security flaws: "My entire digital life was destroyed"

Firebrand Training

26 June, 2013

Cloud has had a number of security concerns since its release and the concerns are becoming a reality for many victims.

The idea of the cloud is to store everything in one place; the obvious downside to this is that it makes everything much more vulnerable to be stolen. And when we mean everything, we mean EVERYTHING.

This is becoming a major concern as cloud is the new 'big thing' to happen to the IT industry; with Apple pushing its iCloud, Amazon pushing its AWS, Google starting to push it too and the big one Microsoft with its increasingly popular cloud based Windows 8.

So if these security issues are not going to be dealt with, many are going to suffer the same consequences Wired blogger Mat Honan did when he had his “digital life destroyed in the space of just 1 hour”.

His story exposes several security faults in many customer service systems - in this case Apple and Amazon
All the hackers had to do was contact Apple support who gave them access to his iCloud account.

Then they contacted Amazon support who gave them access see small parts of sensitive information, such as the 4 last digits of his credit card number.

These 4 digits were then used to pass Apple security questions and gain further information which lead to the following chaos.

"First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook."