Hackers Like Creative Folk

Hey, you, on Photoshop! Yes, you. I know you bought Photoshop Elements to enhance photos of your kids. Or maybe you bought Adobe InDesign in order to create your own marketing materials. Or you want the full-blown version of Adobe Acrobat because the free reader isn't enough for your needs.

Better check your credit card statements. Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief security officer, admitted in a blog post that hackers removed company data. Adobe has been shifting to the business model of pay as you go. Instead of buying the software in disk form, customers will be forced into leasing it and constantly updating it.


My wife and I don't upgrade with every version of any software we use for personal use because the changes are usually minor and the cost is unnecessary. So when Adobe started this shift, my security antenna went up. We use one-time credit card numbers for our online purchases. If we had an open number on file, the hackers who tapped into Adobe would have our credit cards numbers, even though the data was encrypted. Adobe claims that they don't believe that any decrypted numbers were taken, but I wouldn't count on that. By the way, 2.9 million Adobe customers are at risk. The hackers have their credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates and even information pertaining to their orders.

And I hate to break it to you, but all your fancy artwork isn't nearly as creative as some hackers.