Data Breaches

When blaming the user for a security breach is unfair – or just wrong

In his career in IT security leadership, Aaron de Montmorency has seen a lot — an employee phished on their first day by someone impersonating the CEO, an HR department head asked to change the company’s direct deposit information by a bogus CFO, not to mention multichannel criminal engagement with threat actors attacking from social media to email to SMS text. In these cases, the users almost fell for it, but something didn’t feel right.…

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The top 10 hacks and cyber security threats of 2022

Cyber crime is an ever-evolving problem, with an estimated cost of US$10trn by 2025. In 2021, there were over 4,100 publicly disclosed data breaches, which represents approximately 22 billion records exposed. The figures for 2022 are expected to at least match this, or potentially exceed it by as much as five percent.  Cyber Security Hub is dedicated to delivering breaking news from the cyber security sector. With this in mind, here are the news stories…

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Researchers found security pitfalls in IBM’s cloud infrastructure

Security researchers recently probed IBM Cloud’s database-as-a-service infrastructure and found several security issues that granted them access to the internal server used to build database images for customer deployments. The demonstrated attack highlights some common security oversights that can lead to supply chain compromises in cloud infrastructure. Developed by researchers from security firm Wiz, the attack combined a privilege escalation vulnerability in the IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL service with plaintext credentials scattered around the…

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Software projects face supply chain security risk due to insecure artifact downloads via GitHub Actions

The way build artifacts are stored by the GitHub Actions platform could enable attackers to inject malicious code into software projects with CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) workflows that don’t perform sufficient filtering when downloading artifacts. Cybersecurity researchers have identified several popular artifacts download scripts used by thousands of repositories that are vulnerable to this issue. “We have discovered that when transferring artifacts between different workflows, there is a major risk for artifact poisoning…

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IOTW: Passwords secure in latest LastPass data breach

Password manager LastPass has continued to maintain the security of its customers’ passwords despite suffering its second data breach of 2022. The breach was discovered on November 30 after LastPass detected “unusual activity” within a third-party cloud storage solution that it uses. Following its the detection, LastPass launched an investigation into the cyber security incident and alerted the authorities. It was determined by the password management company that the malicious actor gained access to the…

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8 things to consider amid cybersecurity vendor layoffs

2022 has been a heavy year for layoffs in the technology sector. Whether due to budget restraints, mergers and acquisitions, streamlining, or economic reasons, TrueUp’s tech layoff tracker has recorded over 1000 rounds of layoffs at tech companies globally so far, affecting more than 182,000 people. Some of the biggest tech companies in the world have announced significant staff cuts, including Amazon, Twitter, Meta, and Salesforce. Although perhaps less severely affected, cybersecurity vendors haven’t been…

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Fortanix unveils AWS integration for centralized key management

Cloud security vendor Fortanix has updated its Data Security Manager to incorporate support for AWS’ external encryption key store system, adding another major public cloud vendor to the list of those supported for the company’s key management system. With this week’s update, Fortanix, which already supports this type of cloud key management system in Azure and Google Cloud, is trying to solve one of the major security and regulatory problems posed by multicloud environments. Every…

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AWS’ Inspector offers vulnerability management for Lambda serverless functions

Amazon Web Services has announced AWS Lambda serverless function support for its automated vulnerability management service, Amazon Inspector, and a new automated sensitive data discovery capability in its machine learning security and privacy service, Amazon Macie. Both announcements were made during the AWS Re:Invent 2022 conference in Las Vegas this week. They follow other security-focused AWS releases including the launch of Wickr, a new encrypted messaging service for enterprises and Amazon Security Lake, which centralizes…

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AWS launches new cybersecurity service Amazon Security Lake

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a new cybersecurity service, Amazon Security Lake, which automatically centralizes security data from cloud and on-premises sources into a purpose-built data lake in a customer’s AWS account, the company said in a statement.  “Customers must be able to quickly detect and respond to security risks so they can take swift action to secure data and networks, but the data they need for analysis is often spread across multiple sources…

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What is Ransom Cartel? A ransomware gang focused on reputational damage

Ransom Cartel, a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, has stepped up its attacks over the past year after the disbanding of prominent gangs such as REvil and Conti. Believed to have launched in December 2021, Ransom Cartel has made victims of organizations from among the education, manufacturing, utilities, and energy sectors with aggressive malware and tactics that resemble those used by REvil. The group employs double extortion, combining data encryption with data theft and subsequent threats to…

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