The SOPA, Zappos Hacking Serial Drama
Anonymous, angered by the idea of SOPA, has found old media executives as fresh and succulent figures to prey on. Jeffrey L. Bewkes and Summer M. Redstone of Time Warner, and Viacom and CBS respectively are the first to fall victim to the hacker collective’s mischief as they published the two execs personal information. According to The New York Times, angry phone calls and emails pitched Bewkes’ residence.
Aside from hackjobs, SOPA also took a blow from the White House as it made clear via a letter published over the weekend that it wouldn’t support a bill –in this case, SOPA– without it addressing concerns over online censorship and defacement of the internet’s design.
Funnily, News Corps.’s Rupert Murdoch wipes the blame on Google. “So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” he tweeted. “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.” Murdoch’s remarks revealed that he has little, if not, no knowledge of the way search engines work, perhaps too busy with his multi-national corporation.
Google responded to Murdoch’s remarks via CNET: “This is just nonsense. Last year we took down 5 million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads…We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day.”
Zappos gets lucky
Meanwhile, Zappos got a little lucky for having kept its Payment Data safe from the recent attack Sunday night that compromised the information for as much as 24 million of its customers. Still, a lot of personal information was leaked, including “one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password).” The event has caused Zappos to turn off its customer phone system and said they will only respond to email inquiries.
The hackers’ entryway is one of the company’s database via a Kentucky server. Zappos calls for all its customers to change their passwords as soon as possible.
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