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Popular enterprise software company Citrix that provides services to the U.S. military, the FBI, many U.S. corporations, and various U.S. government agencies disclosed last weekend a massive data breach of its internal network by "international cyber criminals." Citrix said it was warned by the FBI on Wednesday of foreign hackers compromising its IT systems and stealing "business documents," adding that the company does not know precisely which documents the hackers obtained nor how they got in. However, the FBI believes that the miscreants likely used a "password spraying" attack where the attackers guessed weak passwords to gain an early foothold in the company's network in order to launch more extensive attacks. "While not confirmed, the FBI has advised that the hackers likely used a tactic known as password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords. Once they gained a foothold with limited access, they worked to circumvent

Exclusive — A security researcher has identified an unsecured server that was leaking detailed personal details of nearly half a million Indian citizens... thanks to another MongoDB database instance that company left unprotected on the Internet accessible to anyone without password. In a report shared with The Hacker News, Bob Diachenko  disclosed that two days ago he found a 4.1 GB-sized highly sensitive database online, named " GNCTD ," containing information collected on 458,388 individuals located in Delhi, including their  Aadhaar numbers and voter ID numbers. Though it's not clear if the exposed database is linked to the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD), Diachenko found that the database contains references and email addresses with "transerve.com" domain for users registered with "senior supervisor," and "super admin" designations. Based upon the information available on  Transerve Technologies  webs

To minimize the risk of privilege misuse, a trend in the privileged access management (PAM) solution market involves implementing just-in-time (JIT) privileged access. This approach to  privileged identity management  aims to mitigate the risks associated with prolonged high-level access by granting privileges temporarily and only when necessary, rather than providing users with continuous high-level privileges. By adopting this strategy, organizations can enhance security, minimize the window of opportunity for potential attackers and ensure that users access privileged resources only when necessary.  What is JIT and why is it important?   JIT privileged access provisioning  involves granting privileged access to users on a temporary basis, aligning with the concept of least privilege. This principle provides users with only the minimum level of access required to perform their tasks, and only for the amount of time required to do so. One of the key advantages of JIT provisioning

Why would someone bother to hack a so-called "ultra-secure encrypted database that is being protected behind 13 feet high and 5 feet thick walls," when one can simply fetch a copy of the same data from other sources. French security researcher Baptiste Robert, who goes by the pseudonym "Elliot Alderson" on Twitter, with the help of an Indian researcher, who wants to remain anonymous, discovered that the official website of popular state-owned LPG gas company Indane is leaking personal details of its millions of customers, including their Aadhaar numbers. This is not the first time when an unprotected third-party database has leaked Aadhaar details of Indian citizens, which is a unique number assigned to each citizen as part of India's biometric identity programme maintained by the government's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Earlier this week an anonymous Indian researcher initially discovered a loophole in the Indane's online

All these numbers…. "More than 5 billion records from 6,500 data breaches were exposed in 2018" — a report from Risk Based Security says. "More than 59,000 data breaches have been reported across the European since the GDPR came into force in 2018" — a report from DLA Piper says. …came from data breaches that were reported to the public, but in reality, more than half of all data breaches actually go unreported. Just last week, we disclosed the existence of some massive unreported data breaches in two rounds, which a hacker has now started monetizing by selling stolen user databases publicly. Now, a new set of databases containing millions of hacked accounts from several websites has been made available for sale on the dark web marketplace by the same hacker who goes by online alias Gnosticplayers. Gnosticplayers last week made two rounds of stolen accounts up for sale on the popular dark web marketplace called Dream Market , posting details of near

A hacker who was selling details of nearly 620 million online accounts stolen from 16 popular websites has now put up a second batch of 127 million records originating from 8 other sites for sale on the dark web. Last week, The Hacker News received an email from a Pakistani hacker who claims to have hacked dozens of popular websites (listed below) and selling their stolen databases online. During an interview with The Hacker News, the hacker also claimed that many targeted companies have probably no idea that they have been compromised and that their customers' data have already been sold to multiple cyber criminal groups and individuals. Package 1: Databases From 16 Compromised Websites On Sale In the first round, the hacker who goes by online alias "gnosticplayers" was selling details of 617 million accounts belonging to the following 16 compromised websites for less than $20,000 in Bitcoin on dark web marketplace Dream Market : Dubsmash — 162 million acco

With so many data breaches happening almost every week, it has become difficult for users to know if their credentials are already in possession of hackers or being circulated freely across the Internet. Thankfully, Google has a solution. Today, February 5, on Safer Internet Day, Google launches a new service that has been designed to alert users when they use an exact combination of username and password for any website that has previously been exposed in any third-party data breach. The new service, which has initially been made available as a free Chrome browser extension called Password Checkup , works by automatically comparing the user's entered credential on any site to an encrypted database that contains over 4 billion compromised credentials. If the credentials are found in the list of compromised ones, Password Checkup will prompt users to change their password. Wondering if Google can see your login credentials? No, the company has used a privacy-oriented i

European airplane maker Airbus admitted yesterday a data breach of its "Commercial Aircraft business" information systems that allowed intruders to gain access to some of its employees' personal information. Though the company did not elaborate on the nature of the hack, it claimed that the security breach did not affect its commercial operations. So, there's no impact on aircraft production. Airbus confirmed that the attackers unauthorized accessed some data earlier this month, which the plane manufacturer claimed was "mostly professional contact and IT identification details of some Airbus employees in Europe." "Investigations are ongoing to understand if any specific data was targeted; however we do know some personal data was accessed," Airbus said in its press release published on Wednesday. After detecting the security breach, the plan manufacturer started an investigation to determine the origin of the hack and to understand the f

The French data protection watchdog CNIL has issued its first fine of €50 million (around $57 million) under the European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law that came into force in May last year. The fine has been levied on Google for "lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding the ads personalization," the CNIL (National Data Protection Commission) said in a press release issued today. The fine was imposed following the latest CNIL investigation into Google after receiving complaints against the company in May 2018 by two non-profit organizations—None Of Your Business (NOYB) and La Quadrature du Net (LQDN). Why Has Google Been Fined? According to the CNIL, Google has been found violating two core privacy rules of the GDPR—Transparency, and Consent. First, the search engine giant makes it too difficult for users to find essential information, like the "data-processing purposes, the data storag

German federal police have arrested a 20-year-old local student for stealing and publishing a massive trove of personal data of hundreds of politicians , journalists and other public figures last month. The young man, whose identity has not been revealed by the police, was arrested after police raided his parent's house in west-central German State of Hesse on Sunday and recovered a computer that the suspect tried to destroy 2 days before the search and a data backup. The suspect, who believed to have acted alone, has admitted of carrying out the mass hacking of German politicians out of anger at their political statements, BKA Federal Criminal Police revealed. "The accused was interrogated on 07.01.2019 by the senior prosecutor and officials of the Federal Criminal Police Office. He comprehensively acknowledged the allegations against him and provided information on his own offenses," the BKA said in a press release . "Due to a lack of grounds for detentio

A massive data breach at the popular online role-playing game 'Town of Salem' has reportedly impacted more than 7.6 million players, the game owner BlankMediaGames (BMG) confirmed Wednesday on its online forum. With the user base of more than 8 million players, Town of Salem is a browser-based game that enables gamers (which range from 7 to 15 users) to play a version of the famous secret role game Town, Mafia, or Neutrals. The data breach was first discovered and disclosed on December 28 when a copy of the compromised Town of Salem database was anonymously sent to DeHashed, a hacked database search engine. Over 7.6 Million Users Accounts Compromised The database included evidence of the server compromise and access to the complete gamer database which contained 7,633,234 unique email addresses (most-represented of the email providers being Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.com). After analyzing the complete database, DeHashed disclosed that the compromised data contained

Another day, another data breach. This time it's the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) NASA today confirmed a data breach that may have compromised personal information of some of its current and former employees after at least one of the agency's servers was hacked. In an internal memo sent to all employees on Tuesday, NASA said the unknown hackers managed to gain access to one of its servers storing the personally identifiable information (PII), including social security numbers, of current and former employees. The agency said NASA discovered the breach on October 23 when its cybersecurity personnel began investigating a possible breach of two of its servers holding employee records. After discovering the intrusion, NASA has since secured its servers and informed that the agency is working with its federal cybersecurity partners "to examine the servers to determine the scope of the potential data exfiltration and identify pot

Twitter has been hit with a minor data breach incident that the social networking site believes linked to a suspected state-sponsored attack. In a blog post published on Monday, Twitter revealed that while investigating a vulnerability affecting one of its support forms, the company discovered evidence of the bug being misused to access and steal users' exposed information. The impacted support form in question was used by account holders to contact Twitter about issues with their account. Discovered in mid-November, the support form API bug exposed considerably less personal information, including the country code of users' phone numbers associated with their Twitter account, and "whether or not their account had been locked." So far the company has declined to provide more details about the incident or an estimate for the number of accounts potentially impacted but says it believes that the attack may have ties to state-sponsored actors. "During our

Facebook's latest screw-up — a programming bug in Facebook website accidentally gave 1,500 third-party apps access to the unposted Facebook photos of as many as 6.8 million users. Facebook today quietly announced that it discovered a new API bug in its photo-sharing system that let 876 developers access users' private photos which they never shared on their timeline, including images uploaded to Marketplace or Facebook Stories. "When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories," Facebook said. What's worse? The bug even exposed photos that people uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post or didn't finish posting it for some reason. The flaw left users' private data exposed for 12 days, between September 13th an

Google today revealed that Google+ has suffered another massive data breach, forcing the tech giant to shut down its struggling social network four months earlier than its actual scheduled date, i.e., in April 2019 instead of August 2019. Google said it discovered another critical security vulnerability in one of Google+'s People APIs that could have allowed developers to steal private information on 52.5 million users, including their name, email address, occupation, and age. The vulnerable API in question is called "People: get" that has been designed to let developers request basic information associated with a user profile. However, software update in November introduced the bug in the Google+ People API that allowed apps to view users' information even if a user profile was set to not-public. Google engineers discovered the security issue during standard testing procedures and addressed it within a week of the issue being introduced. The company said

The World's most popular question-and-answer website Quora has suffered a massive data breach with unknown hackers gaining unauthorized access to potentially sensitive personal information of about 100 million of its users. Quora announced the incident late Monday after its team last Friday discovered that an unidentified malicious third-party managed to gain unauthorized access to one of its systems and stole data on approximately 100 million users—that's almost half of its entire user base. According to Adam D'Angelo, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Quora, the personal user information compromised in the breach includes: Account information , such as names, email addresses, encrypted (hashed) passwords, and data imported from linked social networks like Facebook and Twitter when authorized by users. Public content and actions , like questions, answers, comments, and upvotes. Non-public content and actions , including answer requests, downvotes,

The world's biggest hotel chain Marriott International today disclosed that unknown hackers compromised guest reservation database its subsidiary Starwood hotels and walked away with personal details of about 500 million guests. Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide was acquired by Marriott International for $13 billion in 2016. The brand includes St. Regis, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, W Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Aloft Hotels, Tribute Portfolio, Element Hotels, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, The Luxury Collection, Four Points by Sheraton and Design Hotels. The incident is believed to be one of the largest data breaches in history, behind 2016 Yahoo hacking in which nearly 3 billion user accounts were stolen. The breach of Starwood properties has been happening since 2014 after an "unauthorized party" managed to gain unauthorized access to the Starwood's guest reservation database, and had copied and encrypted the information. Marriott dis

Multinational computer technology company Dell disclosed Wednesday that its online electronics marketplace experienced a "cybersecurity incident" earlier this month when an unknown group of hackers infiltrated its internal network. On November 9, Dell detected and disrupted unauthorized activity on its network attempting to steal customer information, including their names, email addresses and hashed passwords. According to the company, the initial investigation found no conclusive evidence that the hackers succeeded to extract any information, but as a countermeasure Dell has reset passwords for all accounts on Dell.com website whether the data had been stolen or not. Dell did not share any information on how hackers managed to infiltrate its network at the first place or how many user accounts were affected, but the company did confirm that payment information and Social Security numbers were not targeted. "Credit card and other sensitive customer information

British and Dutch data protection regulators Tuesday hit the ride-sharing company Uber with a total fine of $1,170,892 (~ 1.1 million) for failing to protect its customers' personal information during a 2016 cyber attack involving millions of users. Late last year, Uber unveiled that the company had suffered a massive data breach in October 2016, exposing names, email addresses and phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and drivers along with driving license numbers of around 600,000 drivers. Besides this, it was also reported that instead of disclosing the breach at the time, the company paid $100,000 in ransom to the two hackers with access to the stolen data in exchange for keeping the incident secret and deleting the information. Today Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined Uber 385,000 pounds ($491,102), while the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Dutch DPA) levied a 600,000 euro ($679,790) penalty on Uber for failing to protect the personal informatio

The United States Postal Service has patched a critical security vulnerability that exposed the data of more than 60 million customers to anyone who has an account at the USPS.com website. The U.S.P.S. is an independent agency of the American federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States and is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The vulnerability is tied to an authentication weakness in an application programming interface (API) for the USPS "Informed Visibility" program designed to help business customers track mail in real-time. 60 Million USPS Users' Data Exposed According to the cybersecurity researcher, who has not disclosed his identity, the API was programmed to accept any number of "wildcard" search parameters, enabling anyone logged in to usps.com to query the system for account details belonging to any other user. In other words, the attacker could

The real identity of Tessa88—the notorious hacker tied to several high-profile cyber attacks including the LinkedIn , DropBox and MySpace mega breaches—has been revealed as Maksim Vladimirovich Donakov (Максим Владимирович Донаков), a resident of Penza, Russian Federation. In early 2016, a hacker with pseudonym Tessa88 emerged online offering stolen databases from some of the biggest social media websites in the world, including LinkedIn, MySpace, VKontakte (vk.com), Dropbox, Rambler , and Twitter , for sale in various underground hacking forums. The stolen data, taken years ago from several social media sites, included more than half a billion username and password combinations, which were then used in phishing, account takeover, and other cyber attacks. Though Tessa88's profile was active for a few months between February and May 2016, the OPSEC analysis revealed that the same person was involved in various cybercriminal activities since as early as 2012 under different