Category Archives: breach notification

European power grid organization says its IT network was hacked

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The organization that ensures coordination of European electricity markets said Monday that its IT network had been compromised in a “cyber intrusion.” The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), whose members include large electric transmission operators across the continent, “recently found evidence of a successful cyber intrusion into its office network,” the organization said in a terse statement. The compromised office network is not connected to any operational electric transmission system, ENTSO-E said, meaning the attack was confined to IT systems and did not impact critical control systems. “A risk assessment has been performed and contingency plans are now in place to reduce the risk and impact of any further attacks,” the ENTSO-E said, adding that its members were apprised of the situation. CyberScoop sent ENTSO-E’s press office a list of questions including when the digital intrusion began and who might be responsible for the attack. “For obvious […]

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Pentagon’s tech agency reveals potential breach involving personal data

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The agency that secures the U.S. military’s IT infrastructure across the globe says sensitive personal data, including Social Security numbers, hosted on its network may have been compromised in a breach between May and July 2019. The Defense Information Systems Agency notified potential victims of the breach in a letter this month, saying it had tightened protocols for protecting personally identification information (PII) because of the incident. “We take this potential data compromise very seriously,” DISA Chief Information Officer Roger Greenwell said in the letter seen by CyberScoop. There is no evidence that compromised PII has been used maliciously, he said, adding that potential victims will have access to free credit monitoring. Personal data about U.S. government personnel and contractors could be valuable to foreign intelligence agencies and financially-motivated criminals alike. “DISA has conducted a thorough investigation of this incident and taken appropriate measures to secure the network,” an agency spokesperson […]

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US charges four Chinese military members with Equifax hack

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The indictment suggests the hack was part of a series of major data thefts organized by Chinese military and intelligence agencies. Continue reading US charges four Chinese military members with Equifax hack→

Children’s apparel company Hanna Andersson discloses data breach

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Hanna Andersson, a children’s clothing company with stores across the country, has told customers that their card payment data may have been compromised in a security breach last year. For nearly two months from mid-September to mid-November, an “unauthorized third party” had access to card payment information that certain customers entered as they were checking out at Hanna Andersson’s website, Mike Edwards, the company’s CEO, said in a Jan. 15 letter to customers viewed by CyberScoop. The exposed data included payment card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV codes, along with customers’ names, billing addresses, and shipping addresses. Law enforcement officials recently told executives at Portland, Oregon-based Hanna Andersson that there was evidence of a breach, Edwards said. It is unclear how many customers were affected by the incident. While it doesn’t appear that every customer who visited the website during the two month period was victimized, Edwards said, the company […]

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Blunt phone call shows state officials are unhappy with rollout of election security framework

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Mac Warner needed to get something off his chest. The secretary of state of West Virginia had patiently listened to federal officials explain their updated process for notifying state officials and the public of foreign attempts to interfere in U.S. elections. As the Nov. 8 phone call with election officials across the country came to a close, Warner said he wouldn’t mince words the way one of his “silver-tongued” colleagues had done while offering feedback on the updated process. “The analogy that came to me is the realigning of the deck chairs on the Titanic,” Warner said, according to a call transcript obtained by CyberScoop. “I think this is a straightening up of the chairs: It feels good and so forth, but you’re not getting to the substance.” It was one of multiple blunt exchanges about the new threat-notification framework, which is meant to give U.S. officials a consistent process for alerting state personnel, the private sector, Congress, and […]

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Ransomware infects popular web-hosting provider SmarterASP

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A ransomware attack has hit SmarterASP.NET, a popular web-hosting provider, forcing the websites of an unspecified number of customers offline. “Your hosting account was under attack and hackers have encrypted all your data,” SmarterASP.NET, which claims over 440,000 customers, said Monday in a message on its website. “We are now working with security experts to try to decrypt your data and also to make sure this would never happen again.” For relatively cheap, SmarterASP.NET lets organizations or individuals host an unlimited number of websites per month. That makes SmarterASP.NET an attractive target for a ransomware-slinging attacker looking to hit a range of victims. The ransomware attack was an unwelcome disruption for a company that markets itself on keeping sites online. Throughout the day Monday, SmarterASP.NET posted updates to its Facebook page saying that customer accounts locked by the ransomware were gradually being decrypted and restored. Some customers thanked SmarterASP.NET for […]

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South Africa’s banks, and its largest city, are grappling with separate cyber incidents

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It’s been a busy week for cybercriminals targeting organizations in South Africa. Multiple banks in the country have been hit by distributed denial-of-services attacks, while the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, is dealing with the second major breach to its network in three months. Public-facing services of multiple financial institutions were on Wednesday hit by a wave of “ransom-driven” DDoS attacks, according to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), an association of banks focused on combating crime. The attackers aren’t deploying ransomware, but instead are using DDoS attacks to demand a fee to stop inundating victims with web traffic. SABRIC did not disclose the size of the extortion fee. “These attacks started with a ransom note which was delivered via email to both unattended as well as staff email addresses, all of which were publicly available,” SABRIC said in statement, adding that the attack was not confined to organizations in […]

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Czech software firm Avast says CCleaner was attacked — again

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An unidentified attacker used stolen credentials to gain high-level privileges on the network of Czech software security vendor Avast, the company said Monday. The target of the persistent attack was likely Avast’s software-cleaning tool, CCleaner — the same product that was infiltrated in an infamous 2017 supply-chain attack breach that affected over 2 million computers. Worried that the attackers would manipulate CCleaner again, Avast said it halted an upcoming release of the product, revoked its previous security certificate, and put out a security update to users. Those measures, Avast CISO Jaya Baloo assured customers, were enough to ensure that CCleaner users were unaffected by the attack. Avast, which boasts of 400 million users of its products around the world, said it will study its network logs to learn more about the intrusion. “[I]t is clear that this was an extremely sophisticated attempt against us that had the intention to leave no traces […]

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Imperva says cloud firewall customers’ passwords were exposed

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Security vendor Imperva on Tuesday revealed that data belonging to an unspecified number of customers of its cloud firewall product was exposed online. Email addresses and hashed and salted passwords from a database of its Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) customers were left exposed through September 15, 2017,  Imperva CEO Chris Hylen wrote in a blog post disclosing the incident. Additionally, the API keys and SSL certificates of some customers were exposed. The company found out about the incident last week thanks to an unnamed third party, he said. It is unclear to what extent, if any, hackers had accessed the exposed data. The company did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Imperva’s Cloud WAF counts the AARP, General Electric, and Siemens as customers, according to the company’s website. “We continue to investigate this incident around the clock and have stood up a global, cross-functional team,” Hylen wrote, adding […]

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