Cybersecurity Expert

There is a growing generation of adults who have grown up in the digital age, not knowing a life without almost immediate access to a digital connected world. Most adults and children either carry or have access to connected computers, whether they be smartphones, tablets, games consoles, or good old-fashioned PCs, computers have become an essential human tool. Even toddlers seem to have an inherent ability to pick up and use tablet devices to play and learn. While the digital age has brought countless benefits for society, what of the trade-offs in our sleepwalk towards a lifetime dependency on digital technology? In his book ‘ Born Digital ’, Bob Wigley shines a light on the darker side of humanity’s relationship with digital technology, pulling out and expanding on the serious issues which are all too often underplayed or brushed aside by a technology distracted and addicted world. Throughout Born Digital Bob cites a series of sobering statistics which brings a reality check in his ...

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...

What Happened? Twitter confirmed 130 celebrity Twitter accounts were targeted in the cyberattack  on Wednesday 15th July, with 45 successfully compromised. The hacked Twitter accounts included high profile individuals such as  Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian, and Joe Biden. Their accounts were used to send a tweet to scam Bitcoin out of their millions of followers. Scam Social Engineering Tweet sent from Bill Gates' Twitter Account Twitter quickly reacted to the hack by taking an unprecedented step of temporarily preventing all verified users from tweeting, including yours truly;  I was trying to warn people about the attack but my tweets were repeatedly prevented from posting. Before the scam tweets were taken down m ore than £80,000 ($100,000) was sent to the scam Tweet's advertised Bitcoin address. T he FBI is investigating the incident. How the Twitter Accounts were Compromised Twitter said ha...

Twitter boss, Jack Doresy, had his Twitter account was hacked at the end of August, with hackers using his account to send a stream of offensive messages to his 4.2 million followers. It appears Jack was using his mobile phone to provide multi-factor authentication access to his Twitter account, a good solid security practice to adopt, however, it appears his Twitter account password and his mobile phone SMS service were both compromised, the latter probably due to either sim card swap fraud social engineering by the hacker, or by an insider at his mobile network service provider. A database holding over a million fingerprints and personal data was exposed on the net by Suprema , a biometric security company. Researchers at VPNMentor didn't disclose how they were able to find and access the 'Biostar 2' database, nor how long the data was accessible online. Biostar 2 is used by 5,700 organisations, including governments, banks and the UK Metropolitan Police. In a similar...

I'm sure the release of the GDPR on 25th May hasn't escaped anyone's attention. After years of warnings about the EU parliament's intended tough stance on enforcing the human right to privacy in the digital realm, a real 'game changer' of a global privacy regulation has finally landed, which impacts any organisation which touches EU citizen personal data.  The GDPR's potential hefty financial penalties for breaching its requirements is firmly on the radar of directors at large enterprises and small businesses alike, hence the massive barrage of emails we have all have received in recent weeks, on changes to company privacy statements and requesting consent, many of which I noted as not being GDPR compliant as obtaining "explicit consent" from the data subject. So there is a long way to go for many organisations before they become truly GDPR compliant state based on what I've seen so far in my mailbox. Cybercriminals have been quick to take ...

TalkTalk yet again made all the wrong cyber security headlines in the UK this month, after it was handed a £100,000 fine by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for not adequately protecting customer records from misuse by its staff. The ICO investigated the Internet Service Provider after receiving complaints from customers, who said they received cold calls from scammers who knew their TalkTalk account information. Second-hand goods firm CeX disclosed a compromise of up to 2 million online customer accounts due to a hack, however, CeX has yet to disclose any details about the cyber attack. My blog post and advice about this is here  http://blog.itsecurityexpert.co.uk/2017/08/up-to-2-million-cex-customer-account.html Hackers had a field day taking over social media accounts, from Real Madrid and FC Barcelona to Game of Thrones , much embarrassment could have been avoided if they had adopted multi-factor authentication on the accounts, aside from the spate of...

Before Brexit ( Why Brexit will be Business as Usual for Cyber Security & Data Protection in the UK ) dominated the UK parliament agenda, a Commons Committee lambasted the Information Commissioner’s Office for not acting tough enough with TalkTalk in regards to their data breach earlier this year.  The UK parliament also passed the controversial ‘Snoopers Charter’ bill this month. For the fourth month in a row Adobe and Microsoft released critical patches to fix zero day exploited flash vulnerabilities.  A spate of tech company chiefs had their twitter accounts hacked, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who was also spotted on an Instagram picture with tape covering his MacBook's webcam. The Ransomware epidemic continues to make headlines and cause issues across all industries, this month saw concern over a new strain of ransomware called RAA, which executes only using JavaScript.  News Microsoft Office 365 hit with Massive Cerber Ransomware Attack...