I am going to list various events and their lessons that we “should” learn from(my weekend reading):
Home Depot hack from KrebsonSecurity Nov7 post:
56 million emails were harvested as well as the 53 million credit card numbers.
“Home Depot said the crooks initially broke in using credentials stolen from a third-party vendor. The company said thieves used the vendor’s user name and password to enter the perimeter of Home Depot’s network, but that these stolen credentials alone did not provide direct access to the company’s point-of-sale devices. For that, they had to turn to a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was patched only after the breach occurred, according to a story in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.”
If you remember, the Target breach also started with a HVAC vendor, where a virus e-mail attachment was opened and then used the credentials to log into Target which resulted in 70 million customer email addresses.
Lesson Learned: it does not matter whether you are a small shop you can affect a big company – patch your systems, all vendors need to be checked for up-to-date cyber war techniques.
Interesting Ted talk about hacking 101 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnKh6SFEaLg
How does a typical company Get hacked (minute 5 in video)?
Answer to question: Spear phishing (an email with a virus gets sent so that it is opened by employee- now system is infected)
Lesson learned: Learn to spot likely bad emails
What is the most common way people get hacked (Minute 10:48 in video)?
Answer to question: automated bots and reuse of passwords.
Lesson Learned: patch your system and do not reuse passwords across several sites, as any one website now is only as strong as the others. I.e. if a hacked site coughs up your username and password, all sites are now accessible from your username.