WORLD WIDE WEIRD

Hacks are serious business. But sometimes, they can be silly.

- Damien Martin

Cybersecurity is a serious matter.

Businesses take great pains to cover their bases and protect their assets. Hackers, always looking for an edge, sometimes find network access in unexpected places, a consequence of a world where seemingly everything is connected to the internet. The struggle between hackers and defenders is constant, and victory lasts only until the next defeat. But for all the high stakes, the game can still produce humorous moments.

CASINO FISH TANK THERMOMETER

In 2017, Nicole Eagan, then the CEO of UK cybersecurity firm Darktrace, related the story of an unnamed casino that lost 10 gigabytes of data, including a database with information on high rollers. How did the hackers gain entry to the network? Through the IoT-connected thermometer in the aquarium, of course. Such devices can also measure the salinity of the water and manage automated feeding, but it seems nobody at the casino thought of it as a potential weak point in the cybersecurity infrastructure. The hackers worked their way in, got the high-value information "then pulled it back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud," Eagan said.

OPERATION CUPCAKE