Author Archives: Jared Beinart

Data about 57 million people exposed by Elasticsearch servers

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A data breach involving Elasticsearch search-engine technology exposed the personal information of nearly 57 million people for at least two weeks, according to report released Wednesday by the cybersecurity organization Hacken. The breach exposed 73 gigabytes of data as early as Nov. 14, Hacken said, including the names, employers, job titles, emails, addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses of 56,934,021 U.S. residents. There was a separate cache of data titled “Yellow Pages,” the report said, with 25 million records about businesses, including information such as names, company details, zip addresses, latitude/longitude, census tract, phone numbers, web addresses, emails, revenue numbers and more. Hacken said it was unclear where the leak originated, but the formatting of the data appeared to have similarities to fields used by Canadian data management company Data & Leads. The database is no longer exposing information to the public, Hacken said. Elasticsearch is an open-source tool intended to allow users to search data stored in private networks. The […]

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‘Mylobot’ botnet now downloading second-stage malware meant to siphon data

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A global botnet has been set up to spread malware that is now able to siphon data, according to a report from CenturyLink Threat Research Labs. CenturyLink first encountered the Mylobot botnet by looking at IPs that were interacting with its network. In the research, CenturyLink observed DNS searches emerging from a distinct group of IPs. Researchers determined that the DNS lookups for domains were likely generated by an algorithm. The domains found in the isolated IPs were made up of seven randomly-chosen letters followed by the identifiers .ru, .net and .com. The report stated that the Mylobot malware typically generates 60,372 DNS queries that stem from 1,404 domains and 43 subdomains. Researchers found that Mylobot has the ability to appear inactive for 14 days before attempting to contact its command-and-control network, according to CenturyLink’s report. Since June, Mylobot has been observed downloading Khalesi, malware used to siphon data, as a second-stage attack for […]

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Feds get guilty plea in ‘DerpTrolling’ attacks on video game sites

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The hacker who launched distributed denial-of-service attacks on Sony Online Entertainment and other online gaming companies in 2013 and 2014 pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Southern District of California announced this week. Prosecutors said 23-year-old Utah resident Austin Thompson caused at least $95,000 in damages by flooding the companies’ servers with internet traffic in order to take them offline between December 2013 and January 2014. He could receive up to 10 years in prison and is expected to pay a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is scheduled for March 1. Thompson would use the Twitter account @DerpTrolling to announce his DDoS attacks in advance, federal prosecutors said, and then post screenshots of the victims’ servers that had been taken down in the aftermath. The attacks left game servers and other related computers around the world down for hours at a time. “Denial-of-service attacks cost businesses millions […]

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Report: The bigger the company, the messier the password practices

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A new report from password management company LogMeIn finds that the bigger the enterprise, the bigger the problem when it comes to managing passwords. The company’s recently released Global Password Security Report scores its 43,000 customers on password strength, reuse, and use of multi-factor authentication. While the average score equaled a 52 out of 100 — a score LogMeIn considers to be good — the numbers generally showed the larger the company, the lower the average security score. The report pins the trend on the fact that more employees bring more passwords and unsanctioned apps, as well as extra opportunities for dangerous password behaviors. “Passwords continue to be a challenge to cybersecurity in the workplace, and attacks continue to grow in number and complexity every year. Despite these threats, businesses have struggled to quantify their own level of password risk,” said Gerald Beuchelt, Chief Information Security Officer at LogMeIn. That level of risk […]

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If you have a Wi-Fi router, the firmware is probably old, a new report says

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A large majority of Wi-Fi routers in U.S. homes and offices are vulnerable to cyberattacks because their firmware isn’t updated frequently enough, according to a new study by the nonprofit American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research. About 83 percent of routers are “inadequately updated for known security flaws, leaving connected devices open to cyber attacks that can compromise consumer privacy and lead to financial loss,” the report says. Among the risks include information theft and attacks that commandeer internet of things (IoT) devices for botnets. The study was completed in response to an FBI warning in May about Russian hackers compromising hundreds of thousands of home and office routers. To protect the public from potential risks, the FBI warned users to turn routers off and on again and to download firmware updates. Much of the problem stems from the fact that companies often base their IoT firmware — the software that provides low-level control for a […]

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