Welcome to our Cybersecurity News Rundown for the month of November 2017. Here, we will be sharing latest and trending news on events and technological updates from the world of cybersecurity that happened over the past month. Make sure to visit the News Rundown by the end of every month for quick highlights and insights.
1. Malaysian data breach sees data leakage of 46.2million mobile users
A huge data breach is reported to have compromised personal details of 46.2 million Malaysian mobile users, exposing personal details such as mobile number, home address, etc. The security officers of Malaysia are investigating an alleged attempt to sell the personal data linked to 46.2 million mobile users. The data breach is likely to have affected almost the entire population of Malaysia and many tourists too.
The investigations led the security officers to the dark web, where they found web links to download the data. The data breach affected both prepaid and postpaid mobile users from major mobile carriers such as Digi, Maxis, Celcom, and Altel. It also includes personal information from multiple commercial and public sector websites of Malaysia.
2. Phishing campaign targets Ukraine during BadRabbit malware attack
Underneath the BadRabbit strike, hackers secretly launched a well-planned and hidden phishing campaign eyeballing the financial and confidential information. The BadRabbit malware attack was making headlines by hitting major parts of Russia and Ukraine, while this phishing campaign was majorly designed to gain access and steal confidential data of several organizations by going undetected.
A Russian software, 1C, was majorly targeted by this phishing attack that appeared to be from one of their software developers. More than 15 organizations reported that they had been compromised.
3. Hackers target Vietnam’s neighbors, ASEAN and Philippine military website
A hacking group, previously linked to the Vietnamese government, hacked the computers of neighboring countries as well as a group of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) countries. It’s been said that the hacking group had compromised the official ASEAN website over several high-profile summit meetings. The group of hackers, majorly known as Ocean Lotus, was actively targeting foreign multinationals and dissidents in Vietnam.
4. United States prosecutors charged Iranian hacker with hacking GOT episodes
U.S. Federal prosecutors charged an Iranian hacker with stealing 1.5 TB of data from HBO in May 2017. The Iranian hacker, Behzad Mesri, was charged with computer fraud, extortion, identity theft and wire fraud. He was also accused of trying to extort $6 million worth of Bitcoin from HBO for decrypting the data.
The stolen data comprises of unaired episodes and script of one of the marquee series “Game of Thrones”. The data also includes financial documents, mobile numbers of cast and crew, and emails and social media credentials of HBO employees.
5. Uber 2016 data breach affects 57 million users, company paid $100,000 as ransom
Uber, the global transportation company, was hit by a massive data breach in 2016. The firm recently disclosed that hackers had stolen information of 57 million users, including riders and drivers. The company paid a ransom amount of $100,000 to hackers and kept the data breach hidden for more than one year.
Two hackers were involved in the data breach. The stolen data comprises of personal information of company’s drivers and riders, which includes names, phone numbers, and email addresses. The hackers utilized a third party server to gain the access to the information and demanded $100,000 from Uber to delete their copy of the data.
6. Bitcoin reached a hit record of $11,000
The world’s first digital currency, Bitcoin, hit a whopping record of $11,000 on 29th November 2017. The cryptocurrency had been breaking through symbolic price barriers in every few days. From the past three weeks, the cryptocurrency was witnessing a continuous rise from $7000 to $8000, then jumped to $9000 and in the middle of the week, i.e. on 29th November, it reached $11,300. This clearly represents a huge rise of $3,200 in a week’s time.
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