Trick question, but odds are you were too busy leering at exposed celebs to notice yet another massive security hack Whew, thank goodness! The world is finally paying attention to Internet security. Up till now, it’s been too minor an issue to notice — a few million credit cards stolen here, another million-plus tax returns and identities compromised there, not to mention the NSA crawling around in every citizen’s inbox and brain stem while darkening the skies with cam-equipped, war-driving stealth drones that need to know where you are and what you’re doing every minute of every day. That’s nothing, barely a blip on the trouble scale. Now it’s serious. America and the world have come together around a real Internet tragedy and raised awareness of its security problems to a level where someone may have to do something. Finally! All it took was Jennifer Lawrence’s butt. [ Also on InfoWorld: Nude photos, phone records, NSA data offer essential lessons for admins. | For a humorous take on the tech industry’s shenanigans, follow Cringely on Twitter. ] Yeah, that’s my patented talent of really subtle sarcasm, in case you didn’t pick up on it. In truth I don’t know what to think anymore. Is humanity too stupid to survive? Is that why aliens haven’t bothered to visit us? Do we apathetic consumer addicts simply deserve the Web beatings we’re taking every other day? You have to wonder. Lawrence and the other compromised celebs made the news for a full week. Theories abounded. Apple claims it was someone else’s fault. Other folks say Apple inexplicably didn’t protect against brute-force attacks. Miley Cyrus wished she hadn’t already shown everyone her goodies, so she could get some hack headlines, too. Every news outlet I saw ran multiple stories on the Case of the Cracked Celebrity Coochie all week long and some into this week. Who’s minding the Home Depot? Meanwhile, Home Depot got hacked in the same timespan, losing what early reports say may be even more credit card numbers than Target. Yet it didn’t even make Google’s Top Stories list. My clean-mouthed editors probably won’t let me print this, but W-T-F?! If all I’m doing is shouting at the wind when it comes to data assaults like this one, then I’m not sure what to do anymore. On top of that, now there’s a series of arguments about whether these celebrities should have known better. Let me make this very, very clear: Yes, they should have! I agree that celebrities should have the right to post any kind of pictures they want on the same cloud we all use and expect the same rights to privacy and the same level of security. Unfortunately, that means none. Stars — they’re just like us! None of us have a real-world expectation to either privacy or security on the Web today. That’s not how the world is working right now, regardless of what Internet pundits, EFF lawyers, or level-three sex offenders might wish. Like it or not, we live in a world where Internet security is a myth, like a viable Linux desktop or morality among telecoms. For you and me, we can tell ourselves that’s not so bad. We think we can huddle among the masses and hope none of the bad guys find us, though we know in our heart of hearts that if we shopped at Home Depot or Target recently, our hide-in-plain-sight plan turns out to be a myth, too. But if you are a public figure, have kept up with this ever-repeating cycle of celebrities who take pictures of their fun parts only to have them emailed across the planet, and are still mollusk-minded enough to do it yourself — well, you may not deserve what happens, but you certainly can’t stand there with your mouth open, acting like you had no idea it might happen. (“I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!”) Newsflash: It always happens! How can Hollywood’s elite twerker set not know that by now? Keep your camera out of your underwear and this won’t happen to you. If you absolutely must take a sexy selfie, than give it to your partner on a USB stick (and hope it never gets stolen). Sexy sneaker-netting is the only possibility you have for safe nookie-pic sharing, even if you only semi-regularly grace the cover of People. The masses — especially the sexually frustrated hackers — want to see celebrity booty. You’re going to be targeted. That’s not a maybe; that’s a fact of public life. Yes, it sucks. It’s not fair. But that’s where we are, so either deal with reality or prepare to see your bits and berries on the Web. As far as our collective attitude toward the root cause of this vile invasion of celebrity modesty, namely the pipe dream of Internet security for everyone, for once Cringely’s big mouth is at a loss. If losing our hard-earned money isn’t motivation enough to get us capitalist-loving Americans screaming for better electronic protection, if it’s only the occasional exposure of celebrity bootie candy, then I guess we’re stuck until an academic hero stumbles across the formula for unbreakable security and manages to get it to the rest of us before the NSA snipes him or her, for the good of national security. Best of luck with that. Technology IndustryHackingCloud SecurityCareers