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Hacking is a fact of life, get over it
Wed, 27th Feb 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Barricading itself into the confines of the cyber anonymity, head beneath the sand and accepting of the situation it now finds itself, Telecom's laissez-faire approach to hacking may be the root of its cause.

Believing the most recent Yahoo Xtra account hacking to be a "fact of life" given the notoriety of cyber criminals, is the industry's mere acceptance of the problem a valid enough reason to allow its continuance?

Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook….just a long list of recent hacking victims. But what next?

Email users of Yahoo were again breached last night, days after thousands were hit by an ever bigger attack.

For the customers yet to switch passwords, Telecom believe around 1,500 have been breached, again drawing light on a worrying topic in the industry.

Instilling fear amongst customers and companies is one thing, but the actual frequency and validity of the attacks suggest the nature of the beast is bigger than first thought.

So in this case, what happens?

"Over the past two days, Yahoo has identified approximately 1500 additional accounts as being potentially compromised by spammers," Telecom said.

Identifying and acting are clearly two different things in the tech industry, but Telecom's unbothered response to the latest attack is a damning case in point - cyber crime is growing and companies are accepting it.

"While this is higher than usual, on any given day up to 100 accounts are tagged as compromised," Telecom said. "The reality is that this issue is now a fact of life given the global nature of the internet and the increasingly sophisticated tactics of spammers and cyber criminals."

But should this be reality? Yes these hacks are good, damn good in some instances, but using their skill as a reason for acceptance is wrong.

Is hacking getting out of control? Or are we getting worked up over nothing? Tell us your thoughts below