Yandex suffers data breach after sysadmin sold access to user emails
Russian internet and search company Yandex announced today that one of its system administrators had enabled unauthorized access to thousands of user mailboxes. The company discovered the breach internally, during a routine check of its security team. The investigation revealed that the employee's actions led to the compromise of almost 5,000 Yandex email inboxes. The employee was a system administrator who had access rights to provide technical support for Yandex's email service. READ MORE...
Singtel Suffers Zero-Day Cyberattack, Damage Unknown
The Tier 1 telecom giant was caught up in a coordinated, wide-ranging attack using unpatched security bugs in the Accellion legacy file-transfer platform. Singtel, Tier 1 telecom carrier throughout Asia and owner of Australian telco Optus, has been impacted by a software security hole in a third-party file transfer appliance targeted by attackers. Singtel is one of multiple organizations affected by the bug, including an Australian medical research institution. READ MORE...
Copycats imitate novel supply chain attack that hit tech giants
This week, over 275 new packages have been published to the npm open-source repository named after private components being internally used by major companies. These npm packages are identical to the proof-of-concept packages created by Alex Birsan, the researcher who had recently managed to infiltrate over major 35 tech firms and walk away with over six-figures in bug bounty rewards. Within 48 hours of Birsan's disclosure going public, copycat actors began pushing similar packages to npm. READ MORE...
Leading Canadian rental car company hit by DarkSide ransomware
Canadian Discount Car and Truck Rentals has been hit with a DarkSide ransomware attack where the hackers claim to have stolen 120GB of data. Discount Car and Truck Rentals is a leading Canadian car and truck rental company with 300 locations throughout Canada. Enterprise Holdings' Canadian subsidiary acquired the company in 2020. This month, the car rental company suffered a cyberattack by the DarkSide ransomware gang that has disrupted the company's online rental services at discountcar.com. READ MORE...
Egregor ransomware criminals allegedly busted in Ukraine
According to a report from radio station France Inter, numerous cybercriminals connected to the Egregor ransomware gang have recently been arrested. It's not yet clear whether there are suspects in custody both in France and in Ukraine, but France Inter says [our translation] that: This was a massive Franco-Ukrainian operation. Since Tuesday [last week], police in the two countries have been working together in an effort to dismantle a cybercrime group. READ MORE...
Computer Malware Fraudster Gets 2 Years in Prison
A man who played a key role in a computer malware scam has been sentenced to two years in prison, federal prosecutors say. Manish Kumar, 32, directed telephone calls to call centers in India as part of a scheme to mislead individuals into believing that their computers were infected by malware. The callers were then persuaded to buy technical support services that were never provided, according to a statement Friday from the U.S. attorney's office in Rhode Island. READ MORE...
Rampant password reuse puts companies and customers at risk
25.9 million business account credentials and over 543 million breach assets tied to employees in the Fortune 1000 are readily available on the criminal underground, SpyCloud reveals. "Year after year, studies show that the use of weak and stolen credentials is the most common hacking tactic for cybercriminals, yet 76 percent of employees at the world's largest companies are still reusing passwords across personal and professional accounts," said Chip Witt, VP of product management for SpyCloud. READ MORE...
Vulnerability in VMware vSphere Replication Can Facilitate Attacks on Enterprises
VMware last week informed customers about the availability of patches for a potentially serious vulnerability affecting its vSphere Replication product. vSphere Replication, a VMware vSphere component, is a virtual machine replication engine designed for data protection and disaster recovery. VMware has told customers that several versions of the product are affected by a high-severity (important) command injection vulnerability that can be exploited by a hacker with admin privileges. READ MORE...
Accellion to Retire File Transfer Service Targeted in Attacks
Accellion has formally announced plans to retire FTA, the large file transfer service that was at the heart of several recently disclosed data breaches. The 20-year-old service is planned for retirement on April 30, 2021, past which Accellion won't renew licenses for the software. FTA runs on CentOS 6, an operating system that reached end-of-life on November 30, 2020, a matter that Accellion brought to the attention of FTA customers six months ago. READ MORE...
- ...in 1909, humanitarian Hermine "Miep" Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank's family in the Netherlands during WWII, is born in Vienna, Austria.
- ...in 1946, ENIAC, the world's first electronic general-purpose computer, is dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania.
- ...in 1954, cartoonist Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama", is born in Portland, OR.
- ...in 2001, the first draft of the complete human genome is published in the journal "Nature".
