Mythbusters has been all about breaking down what is and isn’t true about certain things in life since its inception into American TV. What you might have thought was possible at one point either became vindicated or debunked as little more than myth at the hands of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman and their crew. It became a widely recognized show and people would actually take time out of their busy day or evening in order to watch what the Mythbusters took on next to as to know whether or not something was real or was made up in an effort to fool the unsuspecting masses. But there was one thing they never got to do and were warned away from without hesitation. They had to back down from showing the flaws in credit card companies and how easy it would be to hack their various systems.
You might be thinking that there’s a practical reason for this and you could be right. After all showing people how to do something could at times be like giving them a schematic to break the law or cause some type of mayhem that might otherwise not be possible for the lack of know-how. But when it comes to hacking into credit card companies’ databases and finding whatever is possible to muck up and switch around it seems far more dangerous since an internet hacker could, without knowing or meaning to, cause some major damage to people’s credit and possibly crash a server or two without really trying if given the idea of how to do it. That all sounds a bit grandiose and like something that might happen in the movies, but keep in mind that simple little viruses can shut a personal PC down without much effort, so something on the scale of what a hacker might try could be exponentially more devastating.
Plus, and this is the kicker, credit card companies are built on keeping people securely in their grasp by maintaining that they are not and cannot be seen as vulnerable in any way. They employ small armies of technicians and specialists to insure that their every virtual door is locked, sealed, and coded so as to avoid being infiltrated on every level, or so we’re made to think. Our information in their hands is supposed to be absolutely safe and their systems are supposed to be impregnable. In many ways this is a challenge that’s been thrown down for the most elite hackers to pick up.
Mythbusters were told to step down from this episode in which they would highlight the security flaws of the credit card companies, and even threatened with immense legal pressure should they continue. That doesn’t exactly sound like a company that’s all that secure and confident in their capabilities. If nothing else it really sounds like they know that they have weaknesses and didn’t want to have them exposed. But let’s look at it this way, if they were exposed it would be a good chance to find those flaws and shore them up. However since they didn’t it seems more likely that these companies are a bit vain in their attempts to assure people that they are on top of it and couldn’t possibly make a mistake.
Yeah, that’s not too reassuring when stuff like this comes to light.
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