In this day and age, websites and social media are the lifeblood of the entertainment industry and, truly, most of the contemporary world. With so much commerce and so many ideas traversing these globally-accessed lanes, in addition to pricey promotions, hackers have become the bane of the tech-heavy world. Despite the best security measures, and passwords more advanced than '123mywebsite,' crackers are constantly challenging web security teams up with new and more innovative ways to break through even the most hearty firewalls.
Apparently, the crown jewel of Disney is not immune from crackers, as Marvel Entertainment recently became the latest victim of a cyber attack.
According to CBR, hackers hit the extremely popular entertainment group today, cracking into several accounts, including The Avengers Twitter account, Marvel's Daredevil, Marvel's Jessica Jones, Marvel's Luke Cage account, and the Guardians of the Galaxy account. Shortly thereafter, the hacker's message, which reads "hey, it's OurMine, Don't worry we are just testing your security, contact us to help you with your security" spun through a number of their other accounts. Those hit were the Black Panther account, as well as Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Captain America, and Marvel Music, as well as Marvel social media head, Adrie Cohen.
It seems Marvel's Twitter accounts weren't the only victims of cyber-warfare, either, as Netflix also suffered a security breach. Once more, the hackers only seem to have affected House of Ideas-related accounts, as the various Marvel's Defenders series were the only ones hit. Although it appears most of the account attacks have been resolved, the assailants remains at large and have been at it for several years already. Known as OurMine, the hacker group often hits celebrity or well-known online presences. Previous targets have included Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, BuzzFeed, TechCrunch, Pokémon Go creator John Hanke, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, as well as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Their typical modus operandi is to crack into these popular accounts to promote their web security site, OurMine Security Group.
While it seems their attacks seem relatively benign so far, OurMine's cracking tendencies are extremely disturbing to the organizations they've hit, since the hacker or hackers could potentially gain access to sensitive data. In past, crackers have rushed the servers of major corporations like Target and Wal-Mart, swiping millions of credit card numbers. In addition, the most highly-publicized recent attack was the Russian hacker-based infiltration of the Democratic National Committee's email server, as well as the allegations of electoral tampering.
As more of the world uploads itself onto the data construct of the Internet, cyber-security and the threats against it are becoming the true face of modern warfare, as well as symbols of large corporate power versus individual might. The evolution of cyber security, much like modern police forces, is largely driven by the rapid clip of technology and the clever if dubious innovations of hackers and crackers alike.
Of course, the real question is, are these hackers DC devotees or disgruntled Marvel fans?