Catalin Cimpanu reports: A Russian state-sponsored cyber-espionage group has come back to life after a one-year period of inactivity with a relative large spear-phishing campaign that has targeted both the US government and private sector. The hacking group is known in infosec circles as Cozy Bear, APT29, The Dukes, or PowerDuke, and is infamous because…
Category: Of Note
UK: Hackers, 21 and 23, admit breaking into TalkTalk’s website in a huge data breach that cost the telecoms firm £77m in lost business
Darren Boyle reports: Two computer geeks hacked the website of telecoms giant TalkTalk in a massive data breach costing the company £77m in lost business, a court heard. Connor Allsopp, 21, and Matthew Hanley, 23, were behind the plot to steal thousands of customers’ personal and banking details in October 2015. TalkTalk was fined a…
HealthEquity, Inc. notifying 190,000 after two employee email accounts were hacked
Reading a notification that employee email accounts were hacked and customer or patient information may have been accessed is nothing particularly unusual these days. What is a bit surprising, however, is when a breached entity offers those affected five years worth of credit monitoring, remediation, and other services. And that’s exactly what HealthEquity, Inc. is doing….
A leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes
Zack Whittaker reports: A security lapse has exposed a massive database containing tens of millions of text messages, including password reset links, two-factor codes, shipping notifications and more. The exposed server belongs to Voxox (formerly Telcentris), a San Diego, Calif.-based communications company. The server wasn’t protected with a password, allowing anyone who knew where to…
Massive Data Leaks Keep Happening Because Big Companies Can Afford to Lose Your Data
Erik Sherman reports: If you live in the United States, there’s almost a 50 percent chance your personal data was lost in the giant Equifax data breach a year ago of 143 million records. Google had its own data breach in October this year that exposed data on as many as 500,000 accounts. Or the…
Firefox Monitor 2.0 gives you desktop notifications if a site suffers a data breach
Natasha Lomas reports: Mozilla is adding a new security feature to its Firefox Quantum web browser that will alert users when they visit a website that has recently reported a data breach. When a Firefox user lands on a website with a breach in its recent past they’ll see a pop up notification informing them…