It worked on other sites, too. That's when Levy's company called the media, and the story became international news. Since then there has been a deluge of hacker news. Some measures are as simple as trading in your middle name for a password that's a bit harder to crack or keeping sensitive customer information only as long as necessary. Others are just a little more complicated.
Hackers often exploit weaknesses in software to penetrate websites and corporate computers.
Across the software spectrum, security holes are discovered every day, and every day software companies issue patches to shore up the leaks. If you're a smaller company, you're probably trusting a hosting service with the intensive job of monitoring and applying the latest patches to the software that makes your e-commerce site work. But hosting services vary. Some have little or no security, while others tout security as their strength. You need to know your Web provider's security policies and track record, say security experts.