Apple, Microsoft and Facebook in the same boat

(I’m tempted to make some allusion to lifeboats and the Life of (Apple) Pie, but I’ll restrain myself.)

Perhaps the remarkable thing about the attacks on these behemoths is that they apparently had such little impact, it’s a wonder they bothered to admit it at all. 😉

Microsoft tells us:

We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.

Apple tells us:

We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple.

Facebook tells us (according to Ars Technica):

…the attack did not expose customer data, and it was contained to the laptops of a small number of Facebook engineers.

Well, I have no reason to disbelieve them: after all, such high-profile organizations would have a lot to lose if it turned out that they were covering up such an exposure (apart from the fact that in many jurisdictions, companies are required to inform their customers if their account and other data may have been breached).

Cheap shots aside, here are some relevant links:

Microsoft: Recent Cyberattacks

Graham Cluley: Microsoft admits it was also hit by hackers, malware infects their Mac business unit

Apple: About the security content of Java for OS X 2013-001 and Mac OS X v10.6 Update 13

Lysa Myers: What We Know About Apple’s Malware Breach (Yes, Mr. Harley did flag this in a previous article, but we may as well have all the links together)

Old Mac “Crisis? What Crisis?” Bloggit