Cybersecurity Expert

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...

A new breed of cyberattack is emerging into the threat landscape, fuelled by geopolitical tension, there has been a rise in stealthy and sophisticated cyber attacks reported within recent industry reports. Carbon Blacks 2019 Global Threat Report , released on Wednesday (23/1/19), concluded global governments experienced an increase in cyberattacks during 2018 stemming from Russia, China and North Korea, while nearly 60% of all attacks involved lateral movement. 'Lateral Movement' is where an attacker progressively and stealthy moves through a victim's network as to find their targets, which are typically datasets or critical assets. This is an attack of sophistication, requiring skill, resources and persistence, beyond the interest of average criminal hackers, whom go after the lowest hanging fruit for an easier financial return. Carbon Black concluded that as 2018 came to a close, China and Russia were responsible for nearly half of all cyberattacks they detected...

The importance of assuring the security and testing quality of third-party provided applications is more than evident when you consider an NHS reported data breach of 150,000 patient records this month. The NHS said the breach was caused by a coding error in a GP application called SystmOne, developed by UK based 'The Phoenix Partnership' (TTP). The same assurances also applies to internally developed applications, case-in-point was a publically announced flaw with Thomas Cook's booking system discovered by a Norwegian security researcher . The research used to app flaw to access the names and flights details of Thomas Cook passengers and release details on his blog . Thomas Cook said the issue has since been fixed. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined Facebook £500,000 , the maximum possible, over the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, which impacted some 87 million Facebook users . Fortunately for Facebook, the breach occurred before the General D...

February saw over 5,000 websites infected by cryptocurrency mining malware after a popular accessibility plugin called ‘BrowseAloud’ was compromised by hackers. This led to several UK Government and Councils websites going offline, including the Information Commissioner's Office, the Student Loans Company, and Manchester City, Camden and Croydon Council website. Symantec Researchers also announced that 'Crytojacking' attacks had increased 1,200% in the UK . Cryptojacking  once involved the installation of cryptocurrency mining malware on users computers, but now it is more frequently used in-browser, by hacking a website and execute a malicious mining JavaScript as the user visits the compromised website, as with the case with the 'BrowseAloud' incident. More than 25% of UK Councils are said to have suffered a breach in the last five years according to the privacy group Big Brother Watch, who said UK Councils are unprepared for Cyber Attacks . There wa...

2018 started with a big security alert bang after Google Security Researchers disclosed serious security vulnerabilities in just about every computer processor in use on the planet.  Named 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre ’, when exploited by a hacker or malware, these vulnerabilities disclose confidential data. As a result, a whole raft of critical security updates was hastily released for computer and smartphone operating systems, web browsers, and processor drivers. While processor manufacturers have been rather lethargic in reacting and producing  patches for the problem, software vendors such as Microsoft, Google and Apple have reacted quickly, releasing security updates to protect their customers from the vulnerable processors, kudos to them. The UK Information Commission's Office (ICO) heavily criticised the Carphone Warehouse for security inadequacies and fined the company £400K following their 2015 data breach , when the personal data, includin...

UK supermarket giant  Morrisons, lost a landmark data breach court case  in December after a disgruntled Morrisons employee had stolen and posted the personal records of 100,000 co-workers online, the supermarket chain was held liable for the data breach by the UK High Court. The High Court ruling now allows those affected to claim compensation for the "upset and distress" caused. Morrisons said it believed it should not have been held responsible and would be appealing against the decision. If the appeal is lost it could open up the possibility of further class action lawsuits cases by individuals. Pending the GDPR becoming law in May 2018, such a court ruling sets a legal precedent for individuals to claim damages after personal data losses by companies through the courts as well. After May 2018, the GDPR grants individuals the right sue companies for damages following personal data breaches. So we can expect 'ambulance chasers' lawyers to pick up on this aspect of...