cyberattack – Page 2 – Cyber Law Watch

Major privacy and security breaches confirmed this week: Westpac, the ANU and Princess Polly targeted

Jun 07 2019

By Cameron Abbott, Allison Wallace and Rebecca Gill

It’s been a chilly start to winter for three Australian organisations, who’ve this week reported major privacy and security breaches.

Up to 100,000 Australians’ personal information has been exposed in a hack affecting Westpac Bank. Westpac confirmed on Monday that details of Australian bank customers (not just those of Westpac) were exposed in a cyberattack on real time payments platform PayID. The banking giant says it noted a high volume of PayID lookups in 2019 on a semi-daily basis, which was a result of attackers trying to guess phone numbers, which, if guessed correctly, would give them the name of the account holder to which the number is linked. Despite the hack, Westpac says that no customer bank account details were compromised as a result of this cyberattack. Nevertheless, experts warn that the details accessed could still be used to commit fraud.

Ransomware attack hits the state of Georgia

Mar 18 2019

By Cameron Abbott and Ella Richards

Jackson County in Georgia has been held ransom after cyber-attackers deployed ransomware that crippled the government’s IT network for 2 weeks. Government officials resorted to coughing up $400,000 in bitcoin to pay the ransom, desperately trying to get out of the offline ‘pen and paper’ situation the attack had left them in. The suspected ransomware, ‘Ryuk’, caught the eye of the authorities at the end of 2018 after it started affecting the printing presses of Tribune Publishing. Due to the highly problematic decryption tool that is provided once the ransom is paid, Ryuk has the frightening capacity to destroy businesses which cannot survive in downtime or do not have restorable backups.

Read further about the incident here: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/georgia-county-pays-400000-to-ransomware-attackers-a-12159

So you plug your shiny Tesla in to charge…

Dec 20 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Wendy Mansell

…and suddenly you are at risk of starting fires.

We all know that these days the Internet of Things is a favourite for cyberattacks, with the latest target being home charging stations for electric cars.

Many home charging stations are controlled remotely by mobile apps, which seem to provide the perfect opportunity for hackers to cause harm.

Hackers cleverly can infiltrate an account and turn charging off or even worse, they may change the current to the extent it can start a fire.

Once again the industry needs to take security seriously for IoT and have the same diligence as IT networks now do.

Research reports say risks to smartphone security aren’t phoney

Jun 19 2018

By Rob Pulham, Warwick Andersen and Sarah Goegan

Beware! Your favourite apps may be putting your phone and data at risk. Reports from Allot and BitSight have examined rising threats to the security of our mobile devices.

Report savages US Government agencies’ cybersecurity efforts

Jun 15 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan

You would think government agencies would have a keen focus on cybersecurity risks, but apparently not! A report by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has found that nearly three-quarters of Federal agencies reviewed have either “at risk” or “high risk” cybersecurity arrangements. 71 of 96 agencies assessed were either missing, had insufficiently deployed or had significant gaps in their fundamental cybersecurity policies, processes or tools.

Not so happy families: Online genealogy website suffers data breach

Jun 13 2018

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Sarah Goegan

Online genealogy platform MyHeritage suffered a major data breach in which email addresses and hashed passwords of over 92 million users were leaked. The data breach occurred in October 2017, but was not discovered until 4 June 2018.

MyHeritage became aware of the breach after a security researcher found a file named “myheritage” on a private server. The file contained all the email addresses of MyHeritage users who signed up through to 26 October 2017, and their hashed passwords.

North Korean cyberattacks increase ahead of summit

Jun 08 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan

North Korean cyberattack activity appears to have ramped up ahead of the highly anticipated US-North Korea summit, which is expected to take place on 12 June 2018.

North Korean hackers known as Group 123 have been identified as the party responsible for new malware activity targeting users in South Korea.

US Department of Homeland Security unveils five point strategy to combat cyber risk

May 18 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan

This week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its Cybersecurity Strategy. The five “pillar” strategy will be executed by the DHS over the next five years, and aims to improve national cybersecurity risk management.

Cybersecurity vulnerability revealed after NSW Government agency’s 49-day hack

Mar 07 2018

By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford

The NSW Government’s vulnerability to hacking has been exposed in a report by state’s auditor-general, in which it was revealed that one government agency took 49 days to shut down a hack.

This hack started with an email account of the unnamed agency being compromised and used to send out “phishing” emails to get the credentials of finance staff members. By day 20, 300 staff had clicked on the bogus link in the phishing email. 200 email accounts ended up being under the control of the hackers.

Is nothing safe? New malware targets industrial control systems

Dec 19 2017

By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford

I’m sure I saw this in Die Hard 4 but “life imitates art”. A new type of malware has been discovered in a very rare field of operation for hackers: attacking industrial control systems. Cybersecurity firm FireEye has been tight-lipped in detailing the attack, but has indicated that it was against “a critical infrastructure organization” which inadvertently caused operations to shut down. The attack is also reminiscent of the infamous “Stuxnet” virus that was used against Iranian nuclear power plants in 2010. Read More

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