If we didn’t know if before, we definitely did by the end of 2014: hacking and cybercrime are on the rise, and all of us are at risk.

From the nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, to Sony’s private staff emails, to stolen credit card details, 2014 was filled with some of the biggest and most worrying hacking events we have ever seen.

To find out more click here for International Business Times.

Public wifi is not safe and neither is it secure. As an experiment, one journalist took a hacker to a café to see just what damage he could do by hacking into the public wifi.

Within 20 minutes the hacker knew the names, passwords and personal lives of almost everyone around them. He knew everything from people’s sexual orientation to their Google searches.

To find out more click here for full article by Maurits Martijnt

After the iCloud hacking scandal, Apple introduced a two-step login process designed to stop brute force attacks (attacks where hackers try to guess your password). However, as expected, hackers soon found a new tool to overcome this problem.

The chances of hackers being able to hack your iCloud account by brute force are significantly higher if you have one of the passwords.

To find out more click here for full story at Gizmodo.

The Sony servers were hacked at the end of 2014, exposing employees’ private work emails and personal information, gender pay gap problems, and some of the juiciest and most damaging Hollywood gossip ever revealed to the public.

It has been speculated that North Korea was responsible for the hacking, possibly in response to the upcoming movie,The Interview, starring Seth Rogan and James Franco. The fictional plot is about a fictional CIA mission to assassinate North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un. However, there are a number of experts who do not believe that the hacking was North Korea’s doing.

To find out more click here for Washington Post.

When we set up two-step verification for our online accounts, we think that we are secure. By protecting ourselves with both a password and a security question (or even a whole series of security questions), we think that we are safe.

Security questions often relate to information such as mother’s maiden name, date of birth, childhood nickname, favourite school teacher, etc.

The problem is, much of this information can be found through both our own and our friend’s social media accounts. We often list our date of birth and high school on Facebook, and our friends may well refer to our nickname when posting on our comments and photos. If you have a personal website, blog or vlogging account, the chances of people finding out that information are even higher.

To find out more click here for Washington Post