Cybersecurity Expert

Another large scale ransomware cyber attack caused chaos and dominated the media headlines around the world this month. The Petya ransomware, a copycat of WannaCry, caused major operational impact to organisations neglecting to apply Microsoft Windows critical security updates. There were reports of the malware significantly impacting British marketing firm WPP, a Jewson hardware store, Ukrainian national infrastructure associated firms, and even halting production at a Cadbury chocolate factory in Australia. Aside from the Peyta ransomware outbreak, it was another busy month of significant cyber security attacks and data compromises across the UK. The UK Parliament's email system was hacked with around 90 email accounts compromised due to the usage of weak passwords by parliament staff, it is not certain how many of 90 were MPs or not, but I wouldn't surprised if there were more than a few using weak passwords. There were further cyber troubles for the  UK gover...

Here we go again, another large scale ransomware attack is causing chaos across the globe, including at British marketing firm WPP, a Harpenden Jewson hardware store, several Ukrainian national infrastructure firms, and even causing a halt in production at a Cadbury chocolate factory in Australia. The ransomware in question is a new strain of the Petya ransomware family, modded to take advantage of the same EternalBlue SMB (Server Message Block) vulnerability ( CVE-2017-0144 ) as the WannaCry ransomware . EternalBlue was leaked by the Shadow Brokers hacker group in April 2017 and is believed to be developed by the NSA.  The malware also uses another exploit for vulnerability CVE-2017-0145  known as EternalRomance. Both of these Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities enables the Peyta ransomware to spread rapidly across local area networks, potentially self-infecting any other Windows systems without the MS17-010 security update applied. It is this rapid spr...

PDF version of this blog post is available here -  ITSE-GDPR-InfoSec-Guide-Jun17.pdf There are plenty of Cyber Security Sales and Marketing teams jumping on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) bandwagon at the moment, often peddling fear of massive fines and in far too many cases spouting nonsense and unnecessary guesswork about the GDPR's information security requirements. You do not need to be a lawyer or a fancy pants security consultant to understand the GDPR's information security requirements, they are freely provided by the European Union. It is just a matter of taking the time to actually read and digest each of the GDPR's requirements and then interpreting how your organisation will comply, albeit some requirements result in full blown project plans. I recommend reading the bite-sized formatted and section headed version of the GDPR on www.privacy-regulaton.eu rather than the  EU released GDPR paper .  Everything in this blog post is no...

A little off-topic but recently I've been asked so many times about the Pearl Parties live broadcasts appearing all over Facebook status walls. If you haven't heard of Pearl Parties, they are sales broadcasts where the hosts entice viewers to buy sealed oysters which are opened live on the broadcast, any pearls found inside are sent to the buyer, and there always seems to be plenty of pearls found. So I did some research and watched several of these broadcasts, it becomes clear why these broadcasts are appearing all over Facebook, as the party hosts constantly offer the chance to win free oyster opening to all viewers that share the broadcast.  After further investigation, it becomes even clearer these Pearl Party broadcasts aren't the harmless fun the presenters insinuate b ut appear to be deceptive . Oysters Originate from the Far East & Individually Vacuum Packed The oysters opened on the Facebook live broadcast are real enough, they are bought in wholesale...

The WannaCry ransomware outbreak within the NHS dominated the national media headlines earlier this month. Impacting 45 NHS sites in England and Scotland, the massive cyber attack led to cancelled operations and diversions of emergency medical services. The WannaCry outbreak was not just limited to the NHS, as thousands of computers were shut down at companies in almost 100 countries. After an initial infection via a phishing email and file encryption, the ransomware has the added ability to rapidly self-replicate, infecting other networked Windows computers without Microsoft’s March 2017 critical update (MS17-010) installed, this drove the swift spread of the malware within large organisations and across the world. Debenhams had 26,000 customer personal details stolen through its flowers service website, which was operated on Debenhams behalf by a third party company. The data breach has been reported to the ICO. With a year to ago until General Data Protection Regulation (GD...