Cyware Weekly Cyber Threat Intelligence June 25 - June 29, 2018

Weekly Threat Briefing • Jun 30, 2018
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Weekly Threat Briefing • Jun 30, 2018
Every week seems to be busier than the last in cybersecurity as new breaches, threat actors and techniques emerge. However, researchers are wielding new ideas and approaches to protect systems and users against attacks. Mozilla is baking ‘Have I Been Pwned’ into a new Firefox privacy tool while Twitter announced physical security key support. Wi-Fi Alliance unveiled the WPA3 security protocol. Meanwhile, California passed the country’s toughest online privacy law.
Mozilla’s Firefox browser is unveiling a new security tool with security researcher Troy Hunt’s data breach service, Have I Been Pwned, baked in to alert users of new data breaches. The website called FireFox Monitor will allow users to enter their email address and find out if their account was part of a known data breach. It will also offer recommendations on how to secure their account.
Twitter has announced support for physical USB security keys to give accounts an additional layer of protection. Using the physical key, users can securely sign into their accounts as part of the two-factor authentication process, rather than entering a text message sent to their phone.
Cisco researchers released a decryptor for the destructive Thanatos ransomware that plagued users since February and destroyed their data even if they paid the ransom. The researchers built and released the ThanatosDecryptor for free that works on all current versions of the ransomware. It should be run on the original infected machine to decrypt files and to help victims retrieve their data.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the new WPA3 Security standard for wireless connections, routers and wireless devices. Replacing the aging WPA2 protocol that was introduced back in 2004, the new WPA3 standard will make it harder for threat actors to run common hacking attacks on wireless networks and make passwords much harder to crack.
California just passed the country’s toughest data privacy law on Thursday. The new law, which will take effect on January 1, 2020, will require companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they collect, why and what categories of third party firms have received it as well.
This week saw a wave of fresh data breaches and attacks. Exactis exposed 340 million records while Ticketmaster said 5% of all users were affected in a major breach. HealthEngine was caught sharing patient data with a law firm as part of a “referral partnership”. ProtonMail was hit with a major DDoS attack that briefly took down its email service.
Marketing firm Exactis is said to have exposed a huge database containing nearly 340 million in-depth records of Americans and businesses on a publicly accessible server. The data included a trove of personal information from people’s phone numbers and home addresses to interests, smoking habits and number, age and gender of their children.
In Australia, popular medical appointment booking website HealthEngine was caught sharing patients’ private data with a third-party law firm as part of a “referral partnership pilot.” The booking service requires users to input details of their medical conditions and whether they have been in a traffic accident or suffered a workplace injury.
Ticket-selling giant Ticketmaster said it suffered a breach due to a customer support tool on its website by Inbenta that was exploited to harvest users’ personal and payment data. About 5% of Ticketmaster customers were impacted by the breach with several people already reported being scammed out of money as a result of the incident.
Hotel-booking software provider FastBooking said hackers managed to exploit a vulnerability in a web application hosted on its server to install malware and steal data. The breach compromised the personal information and credit card data from guests of hundreds of affected hotels around the world.
ProtonMail was hit with a powerful DDoS attack that affected the email service for several hours with sporadic outages that lasted minutes at a time. The company said it was “unlike the more ‘generic’ DDoS attacks” it usually deals with. A group named Apophis Squad claiming to have links to Russia, claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter.
A popular quiz app on Facebook called “Nametests” was found with a flaw that let anyone access information on more than 120 million people, even after the app was deleted. Security researcher Inti de Cuekelaire reported the issue via Facebook’s Data Abuse Bounty Program launched in April, noting the personal data was loaded on Nametests’ website without any encryption or security.