NYT hack exposes Web Achilles' heel

The take-down of the New York Times website for nearly two days this week exposed how easily computer hackers can exploit the Internet's Achilles' heel.

As the website was being restored, the tech industry scurried to assess the high-profile cyberattack and weigh what measures could be taken to prevent a similar breach. In the last two years, a growing number of companies with a significant presence on the Web have had to bolster their defenses to make up for security gaps that were not considered a problem when the Internet was created. But as online attacks escalate in severity and visibility, high-profile targets whose digital presences often span the globe have struggled to spot and repair every vulnerability. The latest cyberattack on the nation's second-largest newspaper highlighted two well-known problems: a reliance on user names and passwords that can be easily stolen; and reliance on an unsecure directory that's crucial to delivering the right content after a user enters a Web address in an Internet browser.