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In the hours following a sweeping cyberattack that leaked sensitive data from over 184 million user accounts across major digital platforms, executives in the only industry where this kind of catastrophic security failure routinely occurs confirmed there was no realistic way to prevent such incidents.
“This was an advanced, coordinated assault that exploited a misconfigured S3 bucket with public read permissions and no access logging. These things happen,” said Pundar Sichai, who oversees an organization that once employed thousands of engineers to implement two-factor authentication. “Besides, in five years most people won’t have jobs or reputations anyway — AI will generate better versions of both.”
Some platforms were affected by malware-injected SDKs used by third-party vendors; others left decades-old infrastructure running on forgotten subdomains. Analysts confirmed that multiple organizations had received warnings months in advance but logged them as “low priority” due to an ongoing push to meet ad revenue targets.
“We’re seeing a pattern here,” admitted Cim Took, glancing nervously at his second iPad. “But the truth is, no system is ever completely secure. Except maybe the one used for executive bonuses.”
In response to the breach, several firms issued press releases assuring the public that their data “matters deeply” and promised to “continue enhancing our security posture” — a phrase critics noted is now appearing in phishing emails themselves.
“It’s unfair to expect companies to keep all that information secure,” said Natya Sadella, while remotely disabling a whistleblower’s LinkedIn profile. “There’s just so much of it. Honestly, people should feel honored their data was even valuable enough to be stolen.”
When asked whether decentralization could reduce the surface area of such attacks, Zark Muckerberg replied: “That’s a great idea. We’ve actually been testing something like that internally. It’s called a whiteboard.”
At press time, companies were reportedly preparing to launch a new “Privacy Dashboard,” where users can view how their data was leaked in a clear, easy-to-navigate timeline — before quantum computers decrypt it all anyway, thanks to most organizations treating post-quantum encryption like Y2K with better branding.