That old phrase SNAFU (“Situation Normal, All F—ked Up!”) certainly describes our choices for 2010′s top 10 security screw-ups.
Not surprisingly some of the biggest names in technology – Google, Cisco, McAfee, AT&T – are prominent on the list, either because they’re obvious hacker targets or because whenever they make a security mistake, it’s big news. Without further ado, the list:
Aurora attacks on Google: In what’s come to be called the “Aurora attacks,” Google in January acknowledges valuable intellectual property was stolen via a network break-in during that past December, intimating China to be the origin of the cyberattack. About a dozen other high-tech and industrial companies appear to have been struck in similar fashion. The Chinese government says it doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Outraged over the cyber-intrusion, Google, which had been adhering to Chinese dictates regarding search-engine censorship, says it will defy them, putting its search-engine license in China in jeopardy. But by year-end, under Chinese pressure, Google abandons its tactic of re-directing Chinese user traffic to its more liberal Hong Kong site and its renewed China license requires censorship.