Among the more popular products to debut at last month's Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, were cross-over machines, tablets and PCs designed for double-duty - to be used at home and in the office.

The shift towards BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) into the enterprise is unstoppable. Employees are happier - and more productive - when they're able to use their computers. Unfortunately, computers that travel from location to location (often left in places where they can be stolen) can be an easy vehicle for hackers to get into corporate networks. 

Only The Paranoid Survive

Like many industry innovations, BYOD offers as much opportunity for wily cyber-thieves as it does for corporate efficiency. Unless enterprises ratchet up their level of vigilance, 2013 is poised to become the most destructive year on record. That will play out in four main areas:

1. Mobile. Experts warn 2013 will be a banner year for mobile malware. Smartphones and tablets running Google's Android  operating system will hardest hit because of both its openness and the relative ease of adding apps. Historically, Windows machines presented the one target too big for hackers to ignore, and attacks on Windows PCs increased three-fold last year. But this year the action will expand to Windows 8 tablets. Out-of-the-box security features in Windows 8 make hacking harder. So many hackers are shifting their tactics to old-school methods like phishing and other techniques that rely on social-engineering of users instead of hacking the code itself

2. Political. Most hackers are simply greedy. But an increasing number are motivated by politics. They want to bring down organizations or businesses they deem offensive. Some of these politically motivated attacks have aims than can be more subtle than just destroying data or interrupting service. The New York Times recently discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated their computers systems for four months, seeking information on an investigation into the wealth of a top Chinese leader and his family. The hackers eventually obtained the passwords of all Times employees, and used them to break into the PCs of 53 employees. A day later, The Wall Street Journal reported a similar attack.

3. New Gateways. HTML 5, the latest version of the HTML standard, allows users to personalize their browsing experience, and lets businesses build browser-based applications. But reducing the layers of technology between the browser and internal systems removes obstacles for would-be hackers. As businesses make greater use of popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, hackers can gain access to personal data that can be used for phishing or other "social engineering" attacks. And there's also the potential for corporate networks to be infected by malware from social networking sites.

4. Hacking-as-a-Service? Believe it or not, hackers are providing suites of sophisticated tools so that even casual criminals can mount credible cyber-attacks. The availability of user-friendly hacking tools has the potential to expand the hacking universe by an order of magnitude.

Forewarned Is Forearmed

Remedies are available. Greater password security, network access restriction, firewalls, and abundant redundancies are some of the steps that can help prevent attacks. These are fixes for gaps in the system's hardware and software created by the businesses themselves because they were poorly designed or were not thoroughly tested.

The best way to thwart a would-be criminal hacker is often to hire an "ethical hacker" to design new applications and test them as well as the system as whole. It turns out that the most effective way to counter a hacker’s attacks is to provide him or her with a worthy - and human - opponent.

 Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

That's when it happened.

My phone vibrated. I pulled it out and saw the message. 

"Direct from @MaryKnabben: OMG they said he died...Did he? http://t.co?BQ7zvZ6"

(READER WARNING - DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK OR SUFFER THE SAME FATE AS ME!!)

Who died I wondered? I didn't click the link then. I let it linger. I had a 5pm appointment, three traffic-filled blocks to traverse and emails to send.

Did I Miss Something?

But as I stood waiting for the light to change I wondered if I had missed a major passing. It wouldn't be the first time. I often get alerted to news by direct messages and Twitter friends. Nothing new there. The language in the message was, though. OMG. Not very journalistic or the type of lingo you'd expect an adult to write when a luminary passes. Still, I figured it must have been the writing of someone who was stunned.

At first I figured this was the case, but in my gut, I knew something seemed weird about the tone of the note. As the light turned green I walked, slung my phone back in my pocket and kept moving. 

When I got back to the office, overlooking some of the priciest data centers in Los Angeles if not the nation, I scanned the wires and social media, but I couldn't find anything. Hmmm. My antennae were buzzing. Had I missed it? Did she have a scoop? 

Before I could dive into my detective mode, 5pm came and I was thrust back into reality. By 6:30 it was over but then then I had to meet a friend at The Standard a few blocks away. By the time I got home I was exhausted and I showered and went to bed without checking further. 

I Couldn't Resist Clicking

The next morning I opened up my Hootsuite and looked at the link. There it was, just waiting to be clicked.

I checked out @MaryKnabben's Twitter stream. A fellow journalist from Brazil, we had met at Social Media Week a few weeks earlier when I spoke on a panel on journalism and social media. I liked her. She seemed professional. Her tweets looked normal. Nothing seemed (ph)ishy. So despite a nagging feeling of doubt, I clicked on the link. It took me to a strange site. A pseudo-news site called News 3. But a few seconds of scanning the site, I realized it wasn't news. It was a pay-per-click factory with an attractive young woman at the top of the page and promises of weight loss. What the hell? 

I exited the window, thinking nothing of it. Must have been a wrong link. I should have known better. I should have known right away something was up. But I didn't. 

Uh, Oh. Trouble!

A few hours later, after a break for lunch, I reopened my Hootsuite account. And there it was. Staring at me. A new tweet on my timeline.

A tweet that I. Did. Not. Send. 

"Losing weight is easy." I'm 6 feet tall and 160 lbs. I don't need to lose weight. And I didn't send that tweet. There was a link at the end of it. I clicked on it. It was the same site. 

"Please don't let my Twitter account be hacked," I pleaded to the powers that be. "Please, please, please. No, no, no."

It was Halloween. And for the first time on this candy holiday I was scared. 

Panic Mode

I deleted the tweet in a heartbeat and immediately changed my password. To my surprise none of my followers replied to the strange tweet. Perhaps that's because I deleted it so fast.  Phew.

At that point I wasn't sure what the hell happened, but I knew someone had caught me with my pants down. I racked my brain. What happened? I've always been so careful... hadn't I?  Could it be one of the hundreds of applications with read and write access to my Twitter account? I know I didn't always read the fine print, but I knew right away that this was a long shoot. No, it couldn't have been Goodreads or Digg. No way. No way...

Then I realized just how un-careful I had been. I realized what it was and who the culprit was, too.

@maryknabben yup...the message came from your account...

— Adam Popescu (@adampopescu) November 1, 2012

Apparently Mary was hacked. She told me she didn't see any changes in her account except for auto-DMing everyone who follows her that "shady link."

I had heard the horror stories. Now I was in one. I got phished. I clicked a funny link.

Stupid. So, so stupid. I couldn't believe it.

Emergency Cleaning

I knew what I had to. I deleted all of my cookies, went through the process of changing my main online passwords (email, banking, social media), ran a virus scan and restarted my computer. I have so many online passwords I knew I couldn't change them all, but the important ones I changed immediately. If someone wants access to my Friendster account, go ahead. It was Halloween night and I had a party to go to. 

After more than an hour of dreaming up new password combos, I waited for my virus status like a patient expecting a STD results phone call from the doctor. No trojan horses popped up. Thankfully. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But I knew I had dodged a bullet. Exhausted and mad at myself, I signed out of my browser still steaming, swearing I would never make this mistake again.

I hope.