Apple and Amazon Fail Security 101

Apple and Amazon — what can we say about their security issues? What we do know is that there is obviously a major flaw with both of their security policies. This is almost embarrassing, if not, absolutely negligent, to say the least. One would think that Apple, one of the leading technology companies in the world, would have better security policies in place.

Let’s talk about what happened last Friday, when Wired reporter, Mat Honan’s iCloud account was hijacked. Apple and Amazon’s security flaw allowed the hacker to pretend to be Honan over the phone and gain access to his accounts. The result was tremendous damage to Mr. Honan’s iCloud and Amazon accounts. They managed to erase all his information from his iPhone, MacBook Pro computer and also his iPad, which contained a lot of personal memories of pictures of his family. The hacker was able to assume his identity and the whole reason was to get to his Twitter account.

Honan was able to get contact with the hacker after regaining his account. The hacker told him exactly how easy it was. They were able to guess his secondary email on his Gmail account, which turned out to be his AppleID, and next they called Amazon.com and added a fake credit card to his account and were able to gain the last four digits of his credit card number. Then they called Apple support with the last four digits of his credit card information and AppleID, which allowed them to easily do the damage to his accounts.

Since this initial story broke both Apple and Amazon have changed their security policies and Amazon no longer allows users to change their credit card information via a phone a call. The question still remains, why would this happen in the first place? Who is in charge of security policies and is anyone even paying attention to what are hackers doing out there? It’s hard to miss, since they make national news almost weekly. Apple has been negligent to admit their flaws of security issues that seem to be plaguing them and exploiting how vulnerable and unprepared they are. I think it’s time to implement a dream team IT department since they can afford to do and its consumers deserve better with the high prices they pay for all their products.

Hackers are going to keep attacking IT infrastructures everywhere and show the lack of security for organizations out there. We as users and consumers must also do our part to really take charge and create very unique passwords for every account out there. This time the “big guys” let us down. IT security has never been a bigger issue than it is today. It’s time for all big companies to get with the program.

Written by IT Management and IT Consulting Professionals at FedSolutions.  Thanks for stopping by!