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Facebook Faces £500,000 Fine in U.K. Over Cambridge Analytica Leak

Facebook Faces £500,000 Fine in U.K. Over Cambridge Analytica Leak

Jul 11, 2018
Facebook has been fined £500,000 ($664,000) in the U.K. after the country's data protection watchdog concluded that its data-sharing scandal broke the law, making it as the social network's first fine over the Cambridge Analytica scandal . Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, and equals to what Facebook earns every 8 minutes. Facebook has been under scrutiny since earlier this year when it was revealed that personal data of 87 million users was improperly gathered and misused by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016. According to the social media giant, a Cambridge University lecturer named Aleksandr Kogan collected the users' data legitimately through a quiz app but then violated its terms by sharing the data with Cambridge Analytica, which was then hired by the Trump presidential campaign. The UK's Information Commissioner's
The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Win $5,000 Prize!

The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Win $5,000 Prize!

Apr 21, 2020
Cybersecurity firm Cynet today announced the launch of a first of its kind challenge to enable Incident Response professionals to test their skills with 25 forensic challenges that were built by top researchers and analysts. The challenge is available on https://incident-response-challenge.com/ and is open to anyone willing to test his or her investigation skills, between April 21st and May 15th. What's more interesting is that there's a USD 5000 prize for the first-place winner of the challenge. Forensic investigation is at the core of any IR processes and provides the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or limited attack view to the concrete and actionable knowledge on the attack's root cause and the impact that is essential for recovery and restore operations. The challenge of the incident responder is to identify and collect the scattered traces the attackers have left them and connect the dots to understand the how, what, and where of the atta
Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu
Thurston sees largest identity theft case in the county's history !!

Thurston sees largest identity theft case in the county's history !!

Jan 10, 2011
An Olympia-area man has been arrested in what the Thurston County Sheriff's Office says is the largest identity-theft case in the county's history. More than 1,000 victims statewide had their driver's licenses, credit cards and Social Security numbers stolen, according to the Sheriff's Office. Detectives served a search warrant at a Johnson Point Road home Thursday morning and arrested Anthony Eugene Vaughn, 30, on suspicion of 1,000 counts of second-degree identity theft and two counts of first-degree identity theft. During a hearing Friday, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Lisa Sutton ordered Vaughn held at the Thurston County Jail with bail set at $500,000. The case remained under investigation, and more arrests might be coming, sheriff's Sgt. Jim Dunn said Friday. Detectives think Vaughn had accomplices who stole identification documents during car prowls and residential burglaries and that he used the documents to open fraudulent bank accounts in the victims' names. He t
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Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
National Security Agency (NSA) to Investigate Nasdaq Hack

National Security Agency (NSA) to Investigate Nasdaq Hack

Mar 30, 2011
The National Security Agency has been called in to help investigate recent hack attacks against the company that runs the Nasdaq stock market, according to a news report. The agency's precise role in the investigation hasn't been disclosed, but its involvement suggests the October 2010 attacks may have been more severe than Nasdaq OMX Group has admitted, or it could have involved a nation-state, according to sources that spoke with Businessweek. "By bringing in the NSA, that means they think they're either dealing with a state-sponsored attack or it's an extraordinarily capable criminal organization," Joel Brenner, former head of U.S. counterintelligence in the Bush and Obama administrations, told the publication. He added that the agency rarely gets involved in investigations of company breaches. Last year, the NSA was called in by Google to help the company secure its network after it was targeted in a sophisticated attack. Regarding the Nasdaq breach, in addition to the Secr
Pakistani Hacker Arrested for Hacking Telecom Company Database

Pakistani Hacker Arrested for Hacking Telecom Company Database

Apr 06, 2014
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested a Pakistani Hacker allegedly involved in hacking into a telecom company and uploading their database on his website. With the help of the National Response Center for Cyber Crime (NR3C) of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, the local authorities were able to trace and arrest the hacker suspected of infiltrating into the systems of Warid Telecom, an Abu-Dhabi-based telecoms company that provides services in Congo, Pakistan and Uganda. The suspect, Mubashar Shahzad , a resident of Kasur, is believed to have downloaded Warid Telecom's customer information from the company's databases and exposed it online, which was published on earlysms.com , a site hosted with HosterPK . Investigation started after one of the senior manager of a cellular company filed a complaint saying the ' information of its consumers till 2006 had been exposed over the internet. ' " A technical/forensic analysis found that the web
PayPal Subsidiary Data Breach Hits Up to 1.6 Million Customers

PayPal Subsidiary Data Breach Hits Up to 1.6 Million Customers

Dec 04, 2017
Global e-commerce business PayPal has disclosed a data breach that may have compromised personally identifiable information for roughly 1.6 million customers at a payment processing company PayPal acquired earlier this year. PayPal Holdings Inc. said Friday that a review of its recently acquired company TIO Networks showed evidence of unauthorized access to the company's network, including some confidential parts where the personal information of TIO's customers and customers of TIO billers stored. Acquired by PayPal for US$233 Million in July 2017, TIO Network is a cloud-based multi-channel bill payment processor and receivables management provider that serves the largest telecom, wireless, cable and utility bill issuers in North America. PayPal did not clear when or how the data breach incident took place, neither it revealed details about the types of information being stolen by the hackers, but the company did confirm that its platform and systems were not affecte
Cynet Offers IR Specialists Grants up to $1500 for each IR Engagement

Cynet Offers IR Specialists Grants up to $1500 for each IR Engagement

May 12, 2020
In the past, the autonomous breach protection company Cynet announced that it is making Cynet 360 threat detection and response platform available at no charge for IR (incident response) service providers and consultants. Today Cynet takes another step and announces a $500 grant for Incident Responders for each IR engagement in which Cynet 360 was used, with an additional $1,000 grant if the customer if the customer purchases an annual Cynet 360 subscription after the IR process is concluded. Learn about this new offering here . Incident response investigations come in a thousand different variations, but most can be broken down into two main parts. The first is discovering the few suspicious machines, user accounts, and network connections out of the mass activities within the attacked environment. The second part follows these discoveries and involves a surgical-like collection and analysis of forensic artifacts to refute or validate the suspicion and if validated to disclo
Hacker arrested by Taiwan Investigation Bureau

Hacker arrested by Taiwan Investigation Bureau

May 08, 2013
A suspect hacker ' Shih ' was arrested by Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB)  last week for hacking into a popular local classic music website. The police raided the apartment of the suspect and seized his computer. The investigation was launched by the bureau after it received a report from the website's operator who said its site was hacked in March. During initial investigations, Shih confessed to the police that he hacked into the website's customer database and made unauthorized changes to customer data. Shih also confessed that he has used a hacking technique called SQL injection to attack the website's database . SQL injection is a technique used to take advantage of non-validated input vulnerabilities to pass SQL commands through a Web application for execution by a backend database. The result is that the attacker can execute arbitrary SQL queries and/or commands on the backend database server through the Web application. The  Criminal Investi
Chinese Hackers Hacked Into U.S. Defense Contractors 20 Times In Just One Year

Chinese Hackers Hacked Into U.S. Defense Contractors 20 Times In Just One Year

Sep 18, 2014
Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese government have successfully infiltrated the computer systems of U.S. defense contractors working with the government agency responsible for the transportation of military troops and goods across the globe, a Senate investigators have found. The Senate Armed Services Committee has been investigating the issue for the past year and found that the U.S. Military's Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) has been infiltrated at least 20 times in a single year, out of which only two were detected. This is probably the most serious allegation yet against China. The successful intrusions attributed to an "advanced persistent threat," a term used to designate sophisticated threats commonly associated with governments. All of those intrusions were attributed to China, the report stated. The investigation was conducted in the 12 months period from June 2012 to June 2013 based on information provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigat
Russian Wiper Malware Likely Behind Recent Cyberattack on Viasat KA-SAT Modems

Russian Wiper Malware Likely Behind Recent Cyberattack on Viasat KA-SAT Modems

Apr 01, 2022
The cyberattack aimed at Viasat that temporarily knocked KA-SAT modems offline on February 24, 2022, the same day Russian military forces invaded Ukraine, is believed to have been the consequence of wiper malware, according to the  latest research  from SentinelOne. The findings come a day after the U.S. telecom company  disclosed  that it was the target of a multifaceted and deliberate" cyberattack against its KA-SAT network, linking it to a "ground-based network intrusion by an attacker exploiting a misconfiguration in a VPN appliance to gain remote access to the trusted management segment of the KA-SAT network." Upon gaining access, the adversary issued "destructive commands" on tens of thousands of modems belonging to the satellite broadband service that "overwrote key data in flash memory on the modems, rendering the modems unable to access the network, but not permanently unusable." But SentinelOne said it uncovered a new piece of malware (
Operation Red October : Cyber Espionage campaign against many Governments

Operation Red October : Cyber Espionage campaign against many Governments

Jan 15, 2013
A new sensational discovered has been announced by Kaspersky Lab's Global Research & Analysis Team result of an investigation after several attacks hit computer networks of various international diplomatic service agencies. A new large scale cyber-espionage operation has been discovered, named Red October , name inspired by famous novel The Hunt For The Red October (ROCRA) and chosen because the investigation started last October. The campaign hit hundreds of machines belonging to following categories: Government Diplomatic / embassies Research institutions Trade and commerce Nuclear / energy research Oil and gas companies Aerospace Military The attackers have targeted various devices such as enterprise network equipment and mobile devices (Windows Mobile, iPhone, Nokia), hijacking files from removable disk drives, stealing e-mail databases from local Outlook storage or remote POP/IMAP server and siphoning files from local network FTP servers. Accordin
Brazil blocks WhatsApp for 72-Hours — Here's Why

Brazil blocks WhatsApp for 72-Hours — Here's Why

May 03, 2016
In Brief For the second time in past five months, a Brazil court ordered local telecommunications companies to block the popular messaging app WhatsApp for 72 hours, afterFacebook-owned WhatsApp company refused to hand over information requested in a drug trafficking investigation. The WhatsApp's shutdown is affecting more than 100 million users throughout the country. Moreover, if Brazilian telecommunications companies do not comply, they could face a fine of $143,000 per day. Brazil just blocked its roughly 100 Million citizens from using WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Facebook, for 72 hours (3 days). A Brazilian Judge ordered the blackout after WhatsApp failed to comply with a court order asking the company to help a branch of civil police access WhatsApp data tied to a criminal investigation. This is for the second time in last five months when a Brazil court ordered local telecommunications companies to block access to the popular messaging servi
Hackers Steal Mimecast Certificate Used to Securely Connect with Microsoft 365

Hackers Steal Mimecast Certificate Used to Securely Connect with Microsoft 365

Jan 13, 2021
Mimecast said on Tuesday that "a sophisticated threat actor" had compromised a digital certificate it provided to certain customers to securely connect its products to Microsoft 365 (M365) Exchange. The discovery was made after the breach was notified by Microsoft, the London-based company  said in an alert  posted on its website, adding it's reached out to the impacted organizations to remediate the issue. The company didn't elaborate on what type of certificate was compromised, but Mimecast offers  seven different digital certificates  based on the geographical location that must be uploaded to M365 to create a server Connection in Mimecast. "Approximately 10 percent of our customers use this connection," the company said. "Of those that do, there are indications that a low single digit number of our customers' M365 tenants were targeted." Mimecast is a cloud-based email management service for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office 365
The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Results and Solutions Announced

The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Results and Solutions Announced

Jul 08, 2020
In April 2020, Cynet launched the world's first Incident Response Challenge to test and reward the skills of Incident Response professionals. The Challenge consisted of 25 incidents, in increasing difficulty, all inspired by real-life scenarios that required participants to go beyond the textbook solution and think outside of the box. Over 2,500 IR professionals competed to be recognized as the top incident responders. Now that the competition is over (however, the challenge website is still open for anyone who wants to practice solving the challenges), Cynet makes the detailed solutions available as a free resource for knowledge and inspiration. Providing the thought process and detailed steps to solve each of the challenges will serve as a training aid and knowledge base for incident responders. The Fine Art of Forensic Investigation The core of any IR processes is the forensic investigation. It uncovers the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or l
Georgia Tech Data Breach Exposes 1.3 Million Users' Personal Data

Georgia Tech Data Breach Exposes 1.3 Million Users' Personal Data

Apr 03, 2019
The Georgia Institute of Technology, well known as Georgia Tech, has confirmed a data breach that has exposed personal information of 1.3 million current and former faculty members, students, staff and student applicants. In a brief note published Tuesday, Georgia Tech says an unknown outside entity gained "unauthorized access" to its web application and accessed the University's central database by exploiting a vulnerability in the web app. Georgia Tech traced the first unauthorized access to its system to December 14, 2018, though it's unclear how long the unknown attacker(s) had access to the university database containing sensitive students and staff information. The database contained names, addresses, social security numbers, internal identification numbers, and date of birth of current and former students, faculty and staff, and student applicants. However, the University has launched a forensic investigation to determine the full extent of the breach.
Facebook Fined £500,000 for Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal

Facebook Fined £500,000 for Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal

Oct 25, 2018
Facebook has finally been slapped with its first fine of £500,000 for allowing political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly gather and misuse data of 87 million users . The fine has been imposed by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office ( ICO ) and was calculated using the UK's old Data Protection Act 1998 which can levy a maximum penalty of £500,000 — ironically that's equals to the amount Facebook earns every 18 minutes. The news does not come as a surprise as the U.K.'s data privacy watchdog already notified the social network giant in July this year that the commission was intended to issue the maximum fine. For those unaware, Facebook has been under scrutiny since earlier this year when it was revealed that the personal data of 87 million users was improperly gathered and misused by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica , who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016. The ICO, who launched an investigation
Cynet Takes Cyber Threat Protection Automation to the Next Level with Incident Engine

Cynet Takes Cyber Threat Protection Automation to the Next Level with Incident Engine

Sep 09, 2020
We have all heard of the "cybersecurity skills gap" — firms' inability to hire and retain high-level cybersecurity talent. I see this gap manifesting in two ways. First, companies that want to hire cybersecurity talent simply cannot find candidates with sufficient skills. Second, companies that cannot afford specialized cybersecurity talent and therefore lack the necessary skills to adequately protect their organizations from the growing and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Both of these are real problems, and both can lead to devastating consequences. It's also fair to say that most cybersecurity teams today are overworked and understaffed. One of the primary reasons we need such high-level cybersecurity skills lies in the shortcomings of cybersecurity technologies. Due to the changing and increasingly sophisticated stream of attack techniques, the breadth and depth of cybersecurity defensive technologies used to combat these threats and protect org
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica – What's Happened So Far

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica – What's Happened So Far

Mar 23, 2018
Top Story— Facebook has just lost over $60 billion in market value over the past two days—that's more than Tesla's entire market capitalisation and almost three times that of Snapchat. Facebook shares plunge over revelations that personal data of 50 million users was obtained and misused by British data analytics firm ' Cambridge Analytica ,' who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016. The privacy scandal that rocked the social media giant was revealed earlier this week when Chris Wylie , the 28-year-old data scientist who worked with a Cambridge University academic, turned into a whistleblower and leaked to the newspapers how poorly Facebook handles people's private information. Wylie claims Cambridge Analytica created " Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindf**k tool " that profiles citizens to predict their voting patterns based on the personal information gathered from a variety of sources and then helps political
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