Telecoms operator Orange Belgium has revealed that a cyber-attack in July resulted in the theft of data from 850,000 customer accounts. The telecoms operator has been quick to reassure its customers that no passwords, email addresses, bank or financial details were hacked.
Another cyber breach as potentially damaging as that of the infamous hook-up site for married users, Ashley Madison, 15 years ago has recently come to light that could have equally serious consequences.
According to a notification filed this month with the California Department of Justice, the sperm bank California Cryobank reports a breach that occurred last April. Stolen files include the names, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial accounts, and health insurance information of many of the sperm bank donors and their recipients.
Social media platform X suffered a major outage on March 10, with tens of thousands of users unable to access the site. Owner Elon Musk blamed the disruption on a “massive cyberattack,” suggesting that a well-funded group or nation-state may have been involved.
The outage, which peaked around 10 a.m. EST, affected both the X app and website, with intermittent service disruptions continuing throughout the day. As frustrated users flocked to alternative platforms like Threads and Bluesky, concerns grew over the security of X’s infrastructure.
Search engine giant’s Google Threat Intelligence Group reports that cybercriminal and state-backed cyber-attacks on the healthcare sector in countries such as the US and UK have escalated to a level where they are actually costing lives.
“Healthcare’s share of posts on data leak sites has doubled over the past three years, even as the number of data leak sites tracked by Google Threat Intelligence Group has increased by nearly 50% year over year. The impact of these attacks means that they must be taken seriously as a national security threat, no matter the motivation of the actors behind it,” says Google.
In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity firm EyeR, Sean Tsvik, explains what small-to-medium-sized organizations (SMEs) can do to protect their systems and customers’ critical data from increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.
They should start by using a managed detection and response (MDR) service. That allows medium-sized organizations to protect themselves against increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks without paying high salaries to in-house cyber experts. MDR services work out costing only a couple of dollars per endpoint and are by far the best starting point for small-to-medium-sized companies looking to strengthen their cyber defenses. Small organizations can also benefit from moving to the cloud as this leaves even fewer endpoints to secure.
A cyber-attack on the London transport system earlier this month was far more serious than initially reported and is rapidly spreading across the UK. It is also now ringing loud alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in light of the upcoming US elections in November.
Transport for London (TfL) has now admitted that over 5,000 customers’ personal details and, in many cases, their financial details have been stolen. TfL added that the breach is also rapidly starting to affect services outside London.
The London Underground, the UK capital’s vast underground rail network, like most European metros, has a touchpad automatic electronic payment system using prepaid plastic cards. London also allows travelers simply to use their visa or MasterCard on the touchpads at the London underground barriers. This means that organizations such as TfL have become repositories of millions of commuters’ financial details, making them a tempting target for small-time cyber crooks.
Hackers from Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate claim to have effected one of the largest Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in history, derailing Russia’s financial services.
According to the Kyiv Post, the attack compromised the online services of all major Russian banks, including the Central Bank, telecommunications service providers, national payment systems, social networks and messengers, government resources, and dozens of other services.
The affected Russian financial institutions are reported to include VTB Bank, Alfa Bank, SberBank, Raiffeisen Bank, RSHB Bank, Ak Bars Bank, Rosbank, Gazprombank, Tinkoff Bank, iBank, Dom.RF Bank, and the Bank of Russia. On the last day of the attack, the resources of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Federal Tax Service was also reported to have been affected.
Cybersecurity firm Okta reports a spike in ‘brute-force’ credential-stuffing attacks over the last month. This follows earlier reports of a spike in ‘brute force’ credential-stuffing attacks reported last week.
Increasingly sophisticated ‘brute force’ attacks use trial and error techniques to crack passwords, login credentials, and encryption keys. New life is now also being breathed into what is essentially an old hacking technique, with widely available software using artificial intelligence (AI) that can carry out large numbers of attempts automatically.
The Chinese Police reported on a nation-state sensitive data leak on Chinese company, I-Soon.
The data uncovers in detail, methods used by Chinese authorities to surveil dissidents, and hacking networks across Central and Southeast Asia.
Schneider Electric announced that they were hit by a ransomware attack on January 17th, resulting in a data breach exposing their customer’s information. The ‘Cactus’ ransomware group claimed the ransomware attack.
Schneider has since informed the affected customers of the breach, which include Hilton, Pepsico, and Walmart. The attack also caused Schneider to shut down several division-specific systems.
Despite the hype of AI in cybersecurity, a PwC survey revealed that 77% of CEOs still believe AI increases the risk of breaches rather than boosts cybersecurity.
The PwC survey interviewed 4,700 executives globally, the majority of whom are CEOs. The survey also found that 63% of respondents believed AI to be a misinformation risk, causing a barrier for legal and reputational damage stemming from generative AI.
The Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa reported a cyberattack that shut down their water pressure technology, to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this past weekend.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the unassuming cyberattack may come with serious international implications, with the attack suspected to come from an anti-Israeli Iranian threat actor group labeled as “Cyber Av3ngers”. This nation-state cyberattack is not the first to disrupt critical water infrastructure.
LivaNova reported a cyber attack to the SEC, resulting in disruption of the company’s operations.
The MedTech company is now in the process of executing its incident response plan and placed some of its systems offline to minimize the damages of the attack.
Despite recent talk of a tech slowdown that reaches cyber, Allied Market Research reported that the market is poised to grow to $478.68B by 2030, with a 9.5% annual growth rate.
The data predicting the cybersecurity market’s growth was taken from Allied Market Research’s “Cyber Security Market by Component, Solution, Deployment Model, Enterprise Size, and Industry Vertical: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021–2030”.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Republic of Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) to establish collaboration efforts under the bilateral Cyber Framework between the US and the Republic of Korea signed in April.
The framework between the Republic of Korea and the US includes sharing technical and operational cyber threat information and best practices in cyber crisis management.
According to a report by the Identity Theft Resource Center, 42% of small businesses lost revenue due to a cyber attack in 2023.
Despite the record rise of cyber attacks (73%) and revenue loss in small businesses, 85% of small business leaders claim to be prepared for cyber attacks.
A massive ransomware attack cost the Sri Lankan government four months of data and spread to UK government offices, including the Cabinet Office.
In today’s roundup; FIN8 threat actors exploit gateway risk, the University of Michigan’s cyber attack, and the FBI taking down the Qakbot offender.
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Tony Glover
