Cybersecurity Expert

   A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, April 2021. Think Before You LinkedIn! Business social media platform LinkedIn is being exploited by nation-state threat actors to target UK citizens.  The UK Security Service MI5 said 10,000 staff from every UK government department and from important UK industries have been lured by fake LinkedIn profiles. MI5 said the faked LinkedIn accounts are created and operation by nation-state spy agencies, with an intent to  recruit individuals or gather sensitive information. MI5 released a campaign video called "Think Before You Link" to raise awareness  of the threat. The personal information of 11 million UK Facebook profiles were been found on a hackers website , with the social media giant seemingly dismissing the significance of the data within a statement, " This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019...

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 ...

You may not know much about the dark web, but it may know things about you. What is the Dark Web? The dark web is a part of the internet that is not visible to search engines. What makes the dark web, dark? it allows users to anonymise their identity by hiding their IP addresses. This makes those using the dark web nearly impossible to identify. Only 4% of the internet is available to the general public, which means a vast 96% of the internet is made up of the deep web. It’s important to note here, that the dark web is just a small section of the internet but it’s a powerful small sector. How much are your bank details worth? The dark web is full of stolen personal bank credentials. It’s common to see MasterCard, Visa, and American Express credentials on the dark web from a variety of different countries. Credit card data in the US, UK, Canada and Australia increased in price anywhere from 33% to 83% in the time from 2015 to 2018. The average price for a UK Visa or Mastercard ...

July was a month of mega data privacy fines. The UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) announced it intended to fine British Airways £183 million for last September's data breach , where half a million BA customer personal records were compromised. The ICO also announced a £100 million fine for US-based Marriot Hotels after the Hotel chain said 339 million guest personal data records had been compromised by hackers. Those fines were dwarfed on the other side of the pond, with  Facebook agreeing to pay a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fine of $5 billion dollars , to put the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal to bed . And Equifax paid $700 million to FTC to settle their 2017 data breach, which involved the loss of at least 147 million personal records . Big numbers indeed, we are seeing the big stick of the GDPR kicking in within the UK, and the FTC flexing some serious privacy rights protection punishment muscles in the US. All 'food for thought' when performing cy...

The UK government controversially gave a green light to Huawei get involved with the building of the UK's 5G networks , although the Chinese tech giant role will be limited to non-sensitive areas of the network, such as providing antennas. This decision made by Theresa May came days after US intelligence announced Huawei was Chinese state funded , and amidst reports historical backdoors in Huawei products, stoking up the Huawei political and security row even further this month, and has resulted in the UK Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, being sacked.  Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson sacked over Huawei leak Daily Telegraph publishes details of a meeting about using the Chinese telecoms firm to help build the UK's 5G network Huawei row: Inquiry to be held into National Security Council leak Is Huawei a Threat to UK National Security? What's the greater risk to UK 5G, Huawei backdoors or DDoS? Backdoors found in Huawei-supplied Vodafone e...