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Two grey hat hackers have pleaded guilty to blackmailing Uber , LinkedIn, and other U.S. corporations for money in exchange for promises to delete data of millions of customers they had stolen in late 2016. In a San Jose courthouse in California on Wednesday, Brandon Charles Glover (26) of Florida and Vasile Mereacre (23) of Toronto admitted they accessed and downloaded confidential corporate databases on Amazon Web Services using stolen credentials. After downloading the data, the duo contacted affected companies to report security vulnerabilities and demanded money in exchange for the deletion of the data, according to a press release published by the US Justice Department. "I was able to access backups upon backups, me and my team would like a huge reward for this," the hackers said to the victim company in an email. "Please keep in mind, we expect a big payment as this was hard work for us, we already helped a big corp which paid close to 7 digits, all

Skyrocketing data breaches bring incalculable losses to organizations and can cost cybersecurity executives their jobs. Here we examine the top five places in 2019 where cybercriminals are stealing corporate and government data without ever getting noticed and then learn how to avoid falling victim to unscrupulous attackers. 1. Misconfigured Cloud Storage 48% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud compared to 35% three years ago, according to a 2019 Global Cloud Security Study by cybersecurity company Thales that surveyed over 3,000 professionals across the globe. Contrastingly, only 32% of the organizations believe that protecting data in the cloud is their own responsibility, counting on cloud and IaaS providers to safeguard the data. Worse, 51% of the organizations do not use encryption or tokenization in the cloud. (ISC)² Cloud Security Report 2019 assets that 64% of cybersecurity professionals perceive data loss and leakage as the biggest risk associated with the

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

UniCredit, an Italian global banking and financial services company, announced today that it suffered a security incident that leaked some personal information belonging to at least 3 million of its domestic customers. Officially founded in 1870, UniCredit is Italy's biggest banking and financial services and one of the leading European commercial banks with more than 8,500 branches across 17 countries. What happened? — Though UniCredit did not disclose any details on how the data incident happened, the bank did confirm that an unknown attacker has compromised a file created in 2015 containing three million records relating only to its Italian customers. What type of information was compromised? — The leaked data contains personal information of 3 million customers, including their: Names Cities Telephone numbers Email addresses What type of information was not compromised? — Unicredit confirmed that the compromised user records did not include any other perso

The U.S. multinational computer software company Adobe has suffered a serious security breach earlier this month that exposed user records' database belonging to the company's popular Creative Cloud service. With an estimated 15 million subscribers, Adobe Creative Cloud or Adobe CC is a subscription service that gives users access to the company's full suite of popular creative software for desktop and mobile, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Lightroom, and many more. What happened? — Earlier this month, security researcher Bob Diachenko collaborated with the cybersecurity firm Comparitech to uncover an unsecured Elasticsearch database belonging to Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service that was accessible to anyone without any password or authentication. How many victims? — The inadvertently exposed database, which has now been secured, contained personal information of nearly 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud user accounts. What type

What's the price of unprotected IT infrastructure? Cybercrime Magazine says that global damages will surpass $6 billion as soon as 2021 . Here we'll go through some of the most frequent and emerging causes of data breaches in 2019 and see how to address them in a timely manner. Misconfigured Cloud Storage It's hard to find a day without a security incident involving unprotected AWS S3 storage, Elasticsearch, or MongoDB. A global study from Thales and the Ponemon Institute states that only 32% of organizations believe protecting their data in a cloud is their own responsibility. Worse, according to the same report, 51% of the organizations still do not use encryption or tokenization to protect sensitive data in the cloud. McAfee confirms, claiming that 99% of cloud and IaaS misconfigurations fall into the realm of end users' control and remain unnoticed. Marco Rottigni, Chief Technical Security Officer EMEA at Qualys , explains the problem: "Some of th

If you have an account with the Comodo discussion board and support forums, also known as ITarian Forum, you should change your password immediately. Cybersecurity company Comodo has become one of the major victims of a recently disclosed vBulletin 0-day vulnerability , exposing login account information of over nearly 245,000 users registered with the Comodo Forums websites. In a brief security notice published earlier today, Comodo admitted the data breach, revealing that an unknown attacker exploited the vBulletin vulnerability (CVE-2019-16759) and potentially gained access to Comodo Forums database. It's worth noting that Comodo forum was hacked on September 29, almost four days after vBulletin developers released a patch to let administrators address the vulnerability, but the company failed to apply the patches on time. As The Hacker News broke the news last week, an anonymous hacker publicly disclosed details of a critical then-unpatched vulnerability in vBulleti

Do you use DoorDash frequently to order your food online? If yes, you are highly recommended to change your account password right now . DoorDash—the popular on-demand food-delivery service—today confirmed a massive data breach that affects almost 5 million people using its platform, including its customers, delivery workers, and merchants as well. DoorDash is a San Francisco-based on-demand food delivery service (just like Zomato and Swiggy in India) that connects people with their local restaurants and get delivered food on their doorsteps with the help of contracted drivers, also known as "Dashers." The service operates in more than 4,000 cities across the United States and Canada. What happened? In a blog post published today, DoorDash said the company became aware of a security intrusion earlier this month after it noticed some "unusual activity" from a third-party service provider. Immediately after detecting the security intrusion, the comp

Ecuador officials have arrested the general manager of IT consulting firm Novaestrat after the personal details of almost the entire population of the Republic of Ecuador left exposed online in what seems to be the most significant data breach in the country's history. Personal records of more than 20 million adults and children, both dead and alive, were found publicly exposed on an unsecured Elasticsearch server by security firm vpnMentor, which made the discovery during its large-scale mapping project. For a country with a population of over 16 million people, the breach exposed details of almost every Ecuadorian citizen, including President Lenín Moreno as well as WikiLeaks CEO Julian Assange , who was given political asylum in the country in 2012. The unsecured Elasticsearch server, which was based in Miami and owned by Ecuadorian company Novaestrat, contained 18GB cache of data appeared to have come from a variety of sources including government registries, an automot

The massive data breach at Capital One – America's seventh-largest bank, according to revenue – has challenged many common assumptions about cloud computing for the first time. Ironically, the incident, which exposed some 106 million Capital One customers' accounts , has only reinforced the belief that the cloud remains the safest way to store sensitive data. "You have to compare [the cloud] not against 'perfect' but against 'on-premises.'" Ed Amoroso, a former chief security officer at AT&T, told Fortune magazine this week. He wasn't the only voice defending cloud computing in the wake of a hack attack. In an article titled "Don't Doubt the Cloud," Fortune columnist Robert Hackett , wrote: "The cloud is undeniably convenient and, more importantly, better in terms of security than what the majority of companies can achieve alone." The problem, experts said, was not cloud computing but rather the tendency for

Hello Ladies, let's talk about periods, privacy, and Facebook. Are you using an app on your smartphone to keep tracks on your periods? Well, it's worrying, because it might be sharing your extremely sensitive information like menstrual cycle and sexual activities with Facebook. A new investigative report from UK-based advocacy group Privacy International revealed how some most popular period tracker apps used by millions of women share their most private health information—including monthly period cycles, contraception use, sexual life, symptoms, like swelling and cramps, and more—directly with Facebook. These period-tracking apps, listed below, transfer your data to Facebook the moment you open them, regardless of the fact that you have a Facebook account or not, and whether you are logged into the social network platform or not. Period-tracking apps are used by women to keep tracks on their monthly period cycles, but mostly they are being used by those who want t

CISOs and CIOs need to know better than anyone the security pulse of their organizations. On the other hand, they cannot be flooded with every changing detail. Finding the right balance that enables them to clearly grasp the big picture required in making sound decisions is a task many security executives find challenging. Threat actors do not acknowledge off-hours or weekends, introducing the need for constant vigilance. Moreover, CIOs and CISOs are heavily dependent on their team for knowledge and often lack the immediate interaction with the events in real-time. This situation is also far from favorable – after all, who if not the security executive should have the ability to be in-the-know and initiate action at the heart of things? Cynet rises to this challenge with the recently launched Cynet Dashboard application, which provides 24/7 insight into the overall security posture, real-time visibility into newly detected threats, and the ability to take rapid action if the nee

XKCD —one of the most popular webcomic platforms known for its geeky tech humor and other science-laden comic strips on romance, sarcasm, math, and language—has suffered a data breach exposing data of its forum users. The security breach occurred two months ago, according to security researcher Troy Hunt who alerted the company of the incident, with unknown hackers stealing around 562,000 usernames, email and IP addresses, as well as hashed passwords. However, the leaked data was actually discovered by security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies, who shared a copy of it with Hunt. At the time of writing, XKCD has taken down its forum and posted a short notice on its homepage, as shared below, urging its users to change their passwords immediately. "The xkcd forums are currently offline. We've been alerted that portions of the PHPBB user table from our forums showed up in a leaked data collection. The data includes usernames, email addresses, salted, hashe

If you have an online account with Foxit Software, you need to reset your account password immediately—as an unknown attacker has compromised your personal data and log-in credentials. Foxit Software, a company known for its popular lightweight Foxit PDF Reader and PhantomPDF applications being used by over 525 million users, today announced a data breach exposing the personal information of 'My Account' service users. Though for using free versions of any Foxit PDF software doesn't require users to sign up with an account, the membership is mandatory for customers who want to access "software trial downloads, order histories, product registration information, and troubleshooting and support information." According to a blog post published today by Foxit, unknown third-parties gained unauthorized access to its data systems recently and accessed its "My Account" registered users' data, including their email addresses, passwords, users' n

Former Amazon employee Paige Thompson , who was arrested last month in relation to the Capital One data breach , has been accused of hacking not only the U.S. credit card issuer, but also more than 30 other companies. An indictment unsealed on Wednesday revealed that Thompson not just stole data from misconfigured servers hosted with a cloud-computing company, but also used the computing power of hacked servers to mine for cryptocurrency, a practice commonly known as " Cryptojacking ." Thompson, known online as "erratic," was arrested by the FBI on July 29 concerning a massive breach in Capital One Financial Corp that exposed the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants in the United States and 6 million in Canada. The stolen data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers linked to United States customers, and 1 million Social Insurance numbers belonged to Canadian citizens, along wit

Imperva, one of the leading cybersecurity startups that helps businesses protect critical data and applications from cyberattacks, has suffered a data breach that has exposed sensitive information for some of its customers, the company revealed today. The security breach particularly affects customers of Imperva's Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) product, formerly known as Incapsula , a security-focused CDN service known for its DDoS mitigation and web application security features that protect websites from malicious activities. In a blog post published today, Imperva CEO Chris Hylen revealed that the company learned about the incident on August 20, 2019, only after someone informed it about the data exposure that "impacts a subset of customers of its Cloud WAF product who had accounts through September 15, 2017." The exposed data includes email addresses and hashed and salted passwords for all Cloud WAF customers who registered before 15th September 2017