HACKED HARDWARE COULD CAUSE THE NEXT BIG SECURITY BREACH

In the past year, cybercrime has blossomed into a pandemic, consuming more than $445 billion in lost time, jobs, and intellectual property. Hackers compromised 233 million personal records from eBay; they intimidated Sony into scuttling the theatrical release of The Interview; they even commandeered the Pentagon’s Twitter account. But as varied as those assaults were, they shared a trait: Somone hacked software to penetrate a network or account. What set the McDonald’s incident apart—and what strikes fear into cybersecurity professionals everywhere—is that the perpetrator hacked hardware instead.