Taken together, these events paint a bleak picture of the state of Internet privacy and security. And this time, experts are telling IT managers that they have only themselves to blame because the primary culprits are lax security practices and an unwillingness to spend extra time and money up front to secure their companies' Web sites. You have to believe in your gut that you're naked out there, but right now, companies think their public servers are no different from their internal servers.
Experts say it's easy to understand why hacking crimes are increasing.
In every case, the victimized company would not comment beyond prepared statements that downplayed the situation or passed the buck. Western Union, of Englewood, Colo., claimed no credit fraud had occurred. An Ikea spokeswoman in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., said the company relies on a third party for its Web presence. It took OPEC, based in Vienna, Austria, almost a day to remove the message a hacker put on its site's introduction page. The organization is trying to trace the attacker, but a spokesman said the hacker hid his or her tracks well.