Cybersecurity Expert

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, July 2020. The standout hack of July 2020, and possibly of the year, was the takeover of 45 celebrity Twitter accounts, in a bid to scam their millions of followers by requesting Bitcoin  in tweets.  Scam Tweet The high-profile Twitter accounts compromised included  Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian, and Joe Biden. Around £80,000 of Bitcoin was sent to the scammer's Bitcoin account before Twitter swiftly took action by deleting the scam tweets and blocking every 'blue tick' verified Twitter user from tweeting, including me .  While the Twitter hack and scam dominated media headlines around the world, the attack was not the 'highly sophisticated cyber-attack' as reported by many media outlets, but it was certainly bold and clever. The attackers phoned Tw...

Guest Post by Jennifer Bell Learn How Hackers Steal and Exploit Information to Ensure This Doesn’t Happen to You  Cybersecurity is an important topic to know and understand in order to keep your information safe and secure. Even more specifically, it’s important to know and understand mobile security as well. Mobile security, especially with iPhones, is crucial as hackers are becoming smarter and more creative when it comes to iCloud hacks. Apple has partnered with network hardware and insurance companies such as Cisco and Aon to provide security against data breaches; but how can you ensure that even with these Apple partnerships that your iPhone is secure and protected against hackers? Here are the most common ways that hackers get into iPhones to steal or exploit personal information, keep these points in mind to best protect yourself from mobile security hacks. Poor Passwords Often, poor password choices or poor password management allows hackers to easily hack into iPhones ...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, June 2020. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a sophisticated nation-state actor is causing increasing havoc by attacking the country’s government, corporate institutions, and his country's critical infrastructure operators . He said,  “We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used". While Morrison didn't actually name the specific country responsible in his statement, Reuters said its sources confirmed China was the culprit.  Political t ensions have ramped up between Australia and China in recent months after Australia called for an investigation into China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. China then reacted by placing tariffs on Australian exports and banning shipments of beef from Australia . Why am I leading a UK cyber...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, May 2020. EasyJet's disclosure of a "highly sophisticated cyber-attack", which occurred in January 2020, impacting 9 million of their customers was the biggest cybersecurity story of May 2020 in the UK. Although no details about this 'cyber-attack' were disclosed, other than 2,208 customers had their credit card details accessed.   Using terms like "highly sophisticated" without providing any actual details of the cyberattack makes one think back to when TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding described a cyber-attack as " significant and sustained cyber-attack " in 2015. In TalkTalk's case, that cyber attack turned out to be a bunch of teenage kids taking advantage of a then 10-year-old SQL injection vulnerability.  City A.M. described Dido's responses as "naive", noting when asked if the aff...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, March 2020. The UK went into lockdown in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, these are unprecedented and uncertain times. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are taking full advantage of this situation, both UK citizens and  businesses have been hit with  a wave of COVID-19 themed phishing emails, and scam social media and text messages (smishing) . Which prompted warnings by the UK National Cyber Security Centre  and  UK Banks , and a crackdown by  the UK Government . Convincing COVID-19 Scam Text Message (Smishing) I have not had the opportunity to analyse a copy of the above scam text message (smishing), but it looks like the weblink displayed is not as it appears. My guess is the link is not part of the gov.uk domain, but the attacker has used an international domain name homograph attack, namely using foreign ...

A roundup of UK focused cyber and information security news stories, blog posts, reports and threat intelligence from the previous calendar month, January 2020. After years of dither and delay the UK government finally nailed its colours to the mast, no not Brexit but Huawei, permitting 'limited use' of the Chinese Telecoms giant's network appliances within the UK's new 5G infrastructure . Whether this is a good decision depends more on individual political persuasion than national security interest, so just like Brexit the general view on the decision is binary, either its a clever compromise or a complete sell out of UK national security. I personally believe the decision is more about national economics than national security, as I previously blogged in ' The UK Government Huawei Dilemma and the Brexit Factor' . The UK government is playing a delicate balancing to safeguard potentially massive trade deals with both of the world's largest economic superp...