The very big news that was barely mentioned at the end of last week had nothing to do with the government shutdown. Although, if you’re a malicious hacker doing something nefarious and want to hide behind a great big distraction, the government shutdown was as good as it gets. As the news media immersed itself in the story of individual citizens who were struggling to deal with the sudden instability in their lives, Adobe got hacked.
You know Adobe. You use their Reader program to turn document into a PDF. Almost every attachment you receive is a PDF. But what you might not realize is that many of the websites you use for work, for shopping, or for playing games are built on a platforms that use Adobe’s Cold Fusion and Cold Fusion Builder programs.
This is where it can get bad for you, me and everybody else.
Whoever hacked into Adobe is probably looking to inflict a much greater deal of damage than stealing credit card data. The hackers stole the source code for Reader, Cold Fusion and Cold Fusion Builder – three programs that have permeated our daily lives. Many software developers use the Cold Fusion system to build the enterprise websites that run some of our largest businesses. These are websites that have established a measure of trust with you, so that you access their information while allowing them to access your information. By manipulating a few lines of Adobe’s source code, the hackers can gain access to your computer and wreak havoc in one or more ways we don’t even want to imagine.
We’re barely into the 21st century and our lives have already become irrevocably computer centric. Foreign nationals who cannot afford to compete with our military have discovered that a few smart people with the right computers can inflict massive damage to our infrastructure using a few lines of code. So, when the time comes to face World War III, we might be more appropriate to designate it World War I.T. because it doesn’t matter how many boots you have on the ground when a war is being fought in the cloud.
You know Adobe. You use their Reader program to turn document into a PDF. Almost every attachment you receive is a PDF. But what you might not realize is that many of the websites you use for work, for shopping, or for playing games are built on a platforms that use Adobe’s Cold Fusion and Cold Fusion Builder programs.
This is where it can get bad for you, me and everybody else.
Whoever hacked into Adobe is probably looking to inflict a much greater deal of damage than stealing credit card data. The hackers stole the source code for Reader, Cold Fusion and Cold Fusion Builder – three programs that have permeated our daily lives. Many software developers use the Cold Fusion system to build the enterprise websites that run some of our largest businesses. These are websites that have established a measure of trust with you, so that you access their information while allowing them to access your information. By manipulating a few lines of Adobe’s source code, the hackers can gain access to your computer and wreak havoc in one or more ways we don’t even want to imagine.
We’re barely into the 21st century and our lives have already become irrevocably computer centric. Foreign nationals who cannot afford to compete with our military have discovered that a few smart people with the right computers can inflict massive damage to our infrastructure using a few lines of code. So, when the time comes to face World War III, we might be more appropriate to designate it World War I.T. because it doesn’t matter how many boots you have on the ground when a war is being fought in the cloud.
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