Cybersecurity Expert

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...

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...

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...