It's your fault and its "the company's" fault and its the sum'bitch who broke into the server's fault.

But look on the bright side... if you are, in fact, a newbie and an aspiring developer, then you've learned a very important lesson early on - that Security Matters, and it matters a lot.

Accept responsiblity for your part in this fiasco, and forgive yourself for it as you begin your new policy of always using taint mode for CGIs and always validating input from external sources.

There are plenty of free tutorials and articles here on perlmonks and on other sites on securing applications.