# Recent Attacks Why Security Matters

Some of the recent high-profile attacks have illustrated the importance of always securing customer data. Notable attacks include the Sony breach in April of 2011, where the personal information of more than 70 million PlayStation Network clients was stolen - including email addresses and passwords - as well as the second Sony breach in October of 2011 where another 93000 accounts were compromised. More recently, Valve was put into a similar situation when its forums were hacked in November of 2011, and the account information of multiple users was accessed.

Both companies claimed that sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) was encrypted, and certainly they did not seem to have any reported incidents of card misuse. They also both suffered greatly from loss of public trust (Sony somewhat more than Valve), which also lead to a massive loss of revenue for Sony (estimated somewhere between $20 million and $24 billion.

### Pictures of you

Recently, some users noted that Facebook had a security vulnerability that allowed users to flag another user's profile as containing "pornographic or inappropriate images". This would then show the user all of the other user's pictures, even the private ones, in order to identify the offending photos. This has added to the negative view that many security professionals hold of Facebook, which has been subject to several security and privacy embarrassments since 2004.