The Week in Breach: 07/09/18 – 07/13/18
Breach news to share with your customers!
This week there was a TON of attention in the media about dark web markets and what’s bought and sold in these shady marketplaces. Timehop, a social media nostalgia app was breached exposing the PII of at least 21 million individuals, due to lack of 2FA, while Macy’s was hit with a breach where credit card data was accessed.
Highlights from The Week in Breach:
– Pedal to the metal! Gas stolen in hack.
– Tracking military workouts!
– Macy’s falls victim to a breach.
– Timehop wishes it could turn back time for more security!
In Other News:
Dead Men Do Tell Tales
Hackers on the Dark Web have always sold medical records, as they are valued much higher than credit card info or PII. Researchers found this week that bad actors in these dark corners of the web are also selling medical records of deceased patients, with one vendor claiming to have 60,000 available for purchase. The records for sale include name, SSN, Address, zip code, phone number, birthday, sex, insurance and even date of death. What ever happened to respecting the dead?
https://threatpost.com/deceased-patient-data-being-sold-on-dark-web/133871/
Classified Documents for $200
The U.S. military can’t escape the Dark Web either! A lot of military documents have turned up on dark web markets after a hacker, with only a moderate level of technical skill, was able to access a captain’s computer through a previously-disclosed FTP vulnerability. Some of the documents are classified, and all of them contain sensitive data about military tactics or hardware. One of the documents is a maintenance book for the MQ-9 Reaper drone which is regarded as one of the deadliest drones used by the United States. How much money will classified U.S. military documents fetch on the Dark Web? $200. That says a lot about how much information is available for criminals to buy.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/10/17555982/hacker-caught-selling-stolen-air-force-drone-manual-dark-web
A $10 Key into Your Network
Remote access to IT systems is a competitive market on the Dark Web, with some running an interest to criminals for as low as $10! Some of these forums have tens of thousands of compromised systems available for bad actors to choose from, across all versions of Windows and at places such as international airports, hospitals and governments. One international airport found on the site had the administrator account exposed, as well as accounts associated with the companies that provide camera surveillance and building security. That’s not a good look!
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-are-selling-backdoors-into-pcs-for-just-10/
Gassed Up
This week in Detroit, two suspects managed to steal over 600 gallons of gasoline after hacking the gas pump. The fuel is worth about $1,800 and was taken in broad daylight over the course of 90 minutes. At least 10 cars benefited from the hack and the police are at a complete loss on who conducted the hack. The hacker or hackers used a remote device that was able to alter the price of the gas and lock out the clerk from being able to shut off the affected pump. With gas prices being so high, it’s likely that attacks like this will continue in the future.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/men-hack-into-pump-at-detroit-gas-station-steal-600-gallons-of-gas_
Fitness App Turned Finder App
A fitness tracking app hailing from Finland has disabled their global activity map after it was revealed it could be used to track the geolocation of military personnel. The map showed the biking and running routes of its users, but also included the usernames of each person, allowing one to cross-reference the username with other websites and possibly identify the person’s name. Using the map, one could see where the person jogged around their home address and around the military base; possibly even bases that are secret to foreign countries.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/polar-app-disables-feature-that-allowed-journalists-to-identify-intelligence-personnel/
Sex Appall
A twist on a classic email scam has appeared this week, with the classic ‘sextortion’ scam getting an upgrade. Now rather than just an intimidation email where targeted parties pay up out of fear of friends and family finding out what they do privately, the email also includes a password. The password appears to be from a large or multiple large data breaches, but these data breaches appear to be fairly old. Those who reported receiving the email claimed that the passwords were correct… ten years ago. While the passwords are outdated in many cases, this likely indicates that we will see more complex versions of this scam appearing in the near future.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/sextortion-scam-uses-recipients-hacked-passwords/#more-44406
Podcasts:
Know Tech Talks – Hosted by Barb Paluszkiewicz
The Continuum Podcast
Security Now – Hosted by Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte
Defensive Security Podcast – Hosted by Jerry Bell (@maliciouslink) and Andrew Kalat (@lerg)
Small Business, Big Marketing – Australia’s #1 Marketing Show!
United States – Macy’s
Exploit: Supply chain exploit.
Risk to Small Business: High: A bad actor accessing names and card information can severely damage consumer trust in a brand.
Individual Risk: High: Individuals affected by this breach are at high risk of their credit card details being sold on the Dark Web.
Macy’s: Large department store chain.
Date Occurred/Discovered: April 26 – June, 2018
Date Disclosed: July, 2018
Data Compromised:
- Full name
- Address
- Phone number
- Email address
- Date of birth
- Debit/ credit card numbers
- Expiration dates
Customers Impacted: Unclear but the hacker operated undetected for almost 2 months.
https://cyware.com/category/breaches-and-incidents-news
United States – Timehop
Exploit: Lack of 2FA on cloud infrastructure.
Risk to Small Business: High: All of Timehop’s customers were a part of this breach, which discredits the organization and could have long-lasting effects on the business.
Individual Risk: Moderate: The credentials stolen could be used to compromise other accounts.
Timehop: Social media aggregation site that allows users to see posts made in the past.
Date Occurred/Discovered: July 4, 2018
Date Disclosed: July 8, 2018
Data Compromised:
- Names
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Date of birth
- Gender
Customers Impacted: 21 Million.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/timehop-breach-hits-21-million/
https://www.timehop.com/security
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/timehop-data-breach/
United States – Cass Regional Medical Center
Exploit: Ransomware.
Risk to Small Business: High: A ransomware attack on any business in any sector would greatly diminish the organization’s ability to operate as needed. In some ransomware cases the data encrypted is lost entirely.
Individual Risk: Moderate: At this point in time there is no evidence that the data affected was also exfiltrated.
Cass Regional Medical Center: Missouri based medical center.
Date Occurred/Discovered: July 9, 2018
Date Disclosed: July 9, 2018
Data Compromised: The medical center’s internal communications system and access to their electronic health record system were affected by the hack, but there is no public indication that patient data has been accessed.
Customers Impacted: Many details surrounding the attack are being withheld from the public at this time, but restoration of the affected systems were at 50% as of July 10, 2018.
https://cyware.com/news/missouris-cass-regional-medical-center-hit-with-ransomware-attack-92884b12
Germany – DomainFactory
Exploit: Dirty cow vulnerability. (this is a nine-year-old critical vulnerability has been discovered in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system and is actively being exploited in the wild)
Risk to Small Business: High: A breach including banking account numbers would heavily damage the reputation of a small business.
Individual Risk: High: A wealth of PII was accessed during this breach and could leave individuals vulnerable to account takeover or identity theft.
DomainFactory: Web hosting service based in Ismaning.
Date Occurred/Discovered: July 6, 2018
Date Disclosed: July 9, 2018
Data Compromised:
- Names
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- DomainFactory passwords
- Dates of birth
- Bank names/ account numbers
- Schufa scores
Customers Impacted: The amount of customers impacted has not been made publicly available.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/user-data-exposed-in-domain-factory-hosting-security-breach/
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/unauthorized-party-accessed/
A note for your customers:
The cost of a breach
A recent study conducted by IBM provides some context to the same old story that you hear in the news of big bad breaches and how scary they are for your business. The Cost of a Data Breach Study by Ponemon* puts numbers to these stories and provides a wealth of analysis so even someone who has never used a computer before can quantify the seriousness of a breach… as long as they are familiar with money.
The average cost of a breach increased this year by 6.4%, with the per capita cost rising less, but only barely, by 4.8% (page 3). The cost of a data breach varies greatly by country, with the United States average breach price coming in at $7.91 Million and per capita costing $233. Canada’s per capita cost is the second highest out of the nations surveyed at $202 per record, and their average price of a breach is $4.74 million. Australia’s cost of a breach is less than the US and Canada, but Aussies are far from getting off free. The average cost of a breach down under is $1.99 million and the per capita cost averages at $108 (page 13).
The study also explored the main factors that were found to affect the cost of a breach, stating 5 major contributing factors that could make the difference between a manageable breach vs a mega breach. The loss of customers following a breach, the size of the data breach, the time it takes to identify and contain a breach, management of detection costs and management of the costs following a breach are the factors that most contribute to the cost of a breach (page 7). The time it takes to identify a breach being a major contributing factor to the cost of a breach is particularly important due to the fact that organizations saw an increased time to identify a breach this year. This can be contributed to the ever-increasing severity of malicious attacks companies face and highlight the need for proactive monitoring for breaches, as well as a serious focus on cybersecurity on a management level. That’s why tools such as Dark Web ID™ that dredge the Dark Web for personal information and credentials can contribute greatly to decreasing the cost of a breach. Organizations that identified breaches within 100 days saved more than $1 Million (page 9) compared to companies who did not. That says a lot because after all… money talks.
*Source: Ponemon Cost of Breach Study 2018
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