September 2019 – Cyber Law Watch

Riding in cars with hackers

Sep 08 2019

By Cameron Abbott, Michelle Aggromito and Alyssia Totham

Ransom-based hacking techniques have primarily been limited to the intangible. We live in a world where unauthorised access to email accounts, bank accounts, and computer systems that may otherwise be private is no longer uncommon.

In some situations, hackers demand a lump sum in return for reinstating control of the accounts and systems to its owners and managers, and otherwise refusing to pay this ransom can likely leave our information and data at the mercy of hackers.

Hyp3r-misappropriation of data gets Instagram’s attention, but is enough being done?

Sep 06 2019

By Cameron Abbott, Michelle Aggromito and Alyssia Totham

Until recently, a security vulnerability in the social media platform Instagram, allowed Hyp3r to illicitly harvest millions of Instagram users’ data and track their locations.

In a similar manner to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that plagued Facebook following the 2016 US presidential election, this latest example of Hyp3r’s mass data collection was discovered through a journalistic investigation and was not uncovered by the social media platform.

Human error accounts for 34% of Notifiable Data Breaches – 3 key take outs from the latest OAIC report

Sep 05 2019

By Cameron Abbott and Karla Hodgson

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has released its Q2 statistics on notifications received under the Notifiable Data Breach (NDB) scheme. The 245 breach notifications in Q2 are on par with each other quarter since the scheme was introduced in July 2018 and while the majority of NDBs (62%) are attributed to malicious or criminal attacks, we noted with interest that a staggering 34% are due to human error – that is, mostly avoidable errors made by staff. A consistent theme of our blogs is reinforcing the message that employees are the front line of defence for organisations.

There are 3 key statistics we took away from these human error NDBs.

Is your iPhone spying on you (again)?

Sep 03 2019

By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace

In the latest installment of this seemingly ongoing tale, Google uncovered (for the second time in a month) security flaws in Apple’s iOS, which put thousands of users at risk of inadvertently installing spyware on their iPhones. For two years.

Archive:September 2019