Author Archives: Dave Whitelegg

Cyber Security Roundup for December 2016

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Yahoo announced the largest ever data breach in history, with over 1 billion Yahoo user accounts compromised by a past cyber attack, which I covered in Yahoo’s Mind-blowing One Billion Data Theft Hack. This truly humongous data hack is distinct from the 2014 breach of 500 million accounts reported by Yahoo in September. Elsewhere KFC, Topps, The Daily Motion and LinkedIn’s Lynda.com also reported large customer data breaches of millions of records during December. 

We need to be mindful of never to “get use to” and accepting these massive numbers of hacked online accounts, by businesses we entrust with our personal information, especially where these businesses have been found ‘wanting’ on the cyber security defences by under investing. The old spin doctor excuses of indefensible super hacks orchestrated by sophisticated nation-state backed dark forces tends not to stand up once the facts are uncovered. There is nothing sophisticated about teenage kids using freely downloadable software to take advantage of decade old and basic security vulnerabilities.
The media and security experts continues to pour scorn on TalkTalk’s cyber security, following the firm’s poor handling and customer advice after a cyber attack of unpatched TalkTalk customer broadband routers.


ThyssenKrupp, a large German steel maker firm, disclosed it was a victim of cyber intellectual property (IP) theft. Businesses rarely admit to IP data theft given such admissions can serious harm the business’s reputation and share price. Given the high media and public attention in protecting personal data from cyber attacks, following a year of high profile large customer record losses due to cyber attacks, it can be easy for businesses to take their eye off protecting their IP, and to become complacent with IP protection and security.


I was quoted in the Focus Training’s Blog. An ‘Ask the Experts’ piece on ‘How to Protect your business from Cyber Crime’, my advice was as follows.

There was a Christmas bumper of patch releases in December, with Microsoft, VMWare, Joomla, PHP and Android all releasing patches for critical vulnerabilities.

News

Awareness, Education and Intelligence

Reports

Continue reading Cyber Security Roundup for December 2016→

Cyber Security Roundup for December 2016

Posted on by
Yahoo announced the largest ever data breach in history, with over 1 billion Yahoo user accounts compromised by a past cyber attack, which I covered in Yahoo’s Mind-blowing One Billion Data Theft Hack. This truly humongous data hack is distinct from the 2014 breach of 500 million accounts reported by Yahoo in September. Elsewhere KFC, Topps, The Daily Motion and LinkedIn’s Lynda.com also reported large customer data breaches of millions of records during December. 

We need to be mindful of never to “get use to” and accepting these massive numbers of hacked online accounts, by businesses we entrust with our personal information, especially where these businesses have been found ‘wanting’ on the cyber security defences by under investing. The old spin doctor excuses of indefensible super hacks orchestrated by sophisticated nation-state backed dark forces tends not to stand up once the facts are uncovered. There is nothing sophisticated about teenage kids using freely downloadable software to take advantage of decade old and basic security vulnerabilities.
The media and security experts continues to pour scorn on TalkTalk’s cyber security, following the firm’s poor handling and customer advice after a cyber attack of unpatched TalkTalk customer broadband routers.


ThyssenKrupp, a large German steel maker firm, disclosed it was a victim of cyber intellectual property (IP) theft. Businesses rarely admit to IP data theft given such admissions can serious harm the business’s reputation and share price. Given the high media and public attention in protecting personal data from cyber attacks, following a year of high profile large customer record losses due to cyber attacks, it can be easy for businesses to take their eye off protecting their IP, and to become complacent with IP protection and security.


I was quoted in the Focus Training’s Blog. An ‘Ask the Experts’ piece on ‘How to Protect your business from Cyber Crime’, my advice was as follows.

There was a Christmas bumper of patch releases in December, with Microsoft, VMWare, Joomla, PHP and Android all releasing patches for critical vulnerabilities.

News

Awareness, Education and Intelligence

Reports

Continue reading Cyber Security Roundup for December 2016→

Yahoo’s Mind-blowing One Billion Data Theft Hack

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Just over three months ago I posted about Yahoo, The Largest Data Breach in History…so far. It was apt I added “so far” in the post title as in the early hours today, Yahoo announced an even more mind-blowing data theft hack of over One Billion Yahoo user accounts.


If you are a concerned Yahoo email account holder
1. Reset your Yahoo account password, make sure your old Yahoo passwords are not used on any other of your online accounts
2. Change your Security Questions and Answers on all accounts with same Q&A as Yahoo, you might have to make up false answers only you know to ensure safety
3. Be extra vigilant, especially with signs of any access to your email account, and receiving scam phishing emails

Mark Crowther, Associate Director at Cyber Security Specialists Cyberis (www.cyberis.co.uk),  has some interesting thoughts on the latest breach at Yahoo, raising serious questions about the company’s historical and ongoing security programme. The following are his views.

 The latest reports say that Yahoo lost data for more than one billion users back in August 2013 and that the data is suspected to contain names, email addresses, hashed passwords, security questions and associated answers. In addition, Yahoo has stated that the attackers have accessed Yahoo proprietary code used to generate cookies for user access without credentials.

This breach raises a number of questions, including: Why did it take so long to identify and notify authorities about it? What are the implications for Yahoo users? What might this mean for Yahoo going forward?

Yahoo appears to have been informed by law enforcement that the breach may have occurred, indicating that its internal detective controls have been, and may continue to be, inadequate. This is reinforced by a statement from Bob Lord (Yahoo’s CISO) who stated “we have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft.” (https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/154479236569/important-security-information-for-yahoo-users).

Although Yahoo claims that this notification is distinct from the 2014 breach (reported in September 2016), it raises questions as to why this more significant breach was not identified during earlier investigations. Forensic investigations may have been either too focussed on the 2014 breach, or incomplete, preventing identification of this earlier and more significant breach. To add balance to this argument, it should be stated that it is not clear at this time if the breached systems were related, however following the 2014 breach, Yahoo should certainly have considered further investigations to identify if any wider breaches had occurred.

So what are the implications for Yahoo users? Considering that this breach constitutes approximately one-third of Yahoo’s user base, it would be a fair assumption for all Yahoo users that their accounts have been compromised. The data set reported to be compromised includes both username and passwords, and whilst the passwords are reportedly hashed, the weak algorithm in use leaves them wide open to abuse (see our earlier blog post on password hashing – https://www.cyberis.co.uk/2012/06/adding-pinch-of-salt.html)

Cyberis advises Yahoo users, and users of related services such as Flickr and Tumblr, to change their passwords with immediate effect. If you have used your Yahoo password with any other service, you should also change these passwords. If you have registered for a website using a Yahoo email account, you should also consider resetting your password for these services, especially if you haven’t used them for some time. Password reset services often use email addresses to manage a password change or forgotten password function. Anyone with access to the breached data could have potentially used this information to access any site associated with your Yahoo email account.

Given that Yahoo has announced that proprietary data was accessed, the breach is currently assumed to extend to Yahoo internal systems. This could suggest a highly skilled and motivated adversary, potentially even a state-sponsored hacking group. Access to millions of email accounts would be a clear motivation to many different threat actors of course, including foreign intelligence services and governments. We fully expect that further information about the extent of the breach will be released in the near future, but in the meantime, it’s certainly not looking good for Yahoo.

Continue reading Yahoo’s Mind-blowing One Billion Data Theft Hack→

Cyber Security Roundup for November 2016

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Several major UK household brands made the headlines for wrong reasons following cyber attacks in October. Tesco Bank refunded £2.5 million to over 20,000 of its customers after Tesco Bank account credentials were hacked and account funds were stolen. Mobile giant ‘Three’ said 6 million of its customer’s personal data records could be at risk after hundreds of new mobile phones were stolen following the hack of a Three employee account. The National Lottery disclosed 26,500 of its online customer accounts had been accessed by hackers, leading to three arrests. Elsewhere a 17 year old pleaded guilty to taking part in the recent TalkTalk hack.

The next evolution of ransomware has arrived with a new variant called Ransoc, and it’s pretty nasty. The malware scans internet history, social media accounts, Skype and photos, and then uses any found illegal, embarrassing and sensitive information to threaten the victim’s reputation should a payment not be sent. 

It turns out locked computer desktops aren’t as safe as you might think after a security researcher Samy Kamar released details of new attacking method called PoisonTap. Samy is famous for hacking MySpace with a worm way back in the day, I had the pleasure of meeting him a few years ago – An Evening with Samy, creator of the Samy MySpace Worm. In simple terms PoisonTap works by plugging a £4 Raspberry Pi Zero computer configured with hacking tools into a USB port, forcing the USB port to act as a network port, the tool is able to eavesdrop non-encrypted network traffic and steal web sessions from web browser sessions running in the background on PCs and Apple Macs, despite the desktop being locked with password protection. Samy released the source code for PoisonTap on Github, and I intend to create a PoisonTap tool for myself in the next few days.

News
Awareness, Education and Intelligence

Continue reading Cyber Security Roundup for November 2016→

Stay Safe from Cyber Crime – Top Ten Tips InfoGraphic

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Given I am regularly asked to explain cyber attacks and then advise on how to protect against them, particularly to home users of late, I thought I would try my hand at creating a simple InfoGraphic to help. It was a challenge to create give the limita… Continue reading Stay Safe from Cyber Crime – Top Ten Tips InfoGraphic→