CYBER ATTACK
SingHealth under siege
SingHealth under siege. Singapore faced its worst cyberattack in history with 1.5 million patients’ medical records being breached including top politicians’ health records.
The island-state local media released the shocking news on Friday, 20 Jul 2018, however, the data breach could have taken place much earlier as some cybersecurity experts traced the breach back to the beginning of the month, at 4 July 2018, which coincidently also known as Independent Day or the US National Day.
Hackers target the “soft belly” of healthcare system
Apparently, the hackers first infected the country’s largest group of healthcare institutions, SingHealth’s front desk with a malware between 27 June and 4 July 2018.
This unauthorised access was then detected on 4 July 2018 at one of SingHealth’s IT databases, then the system administrators undertaken a series of counter-measures to thwart the cyber-attack. According to local media, no further data theft were recorded after 4 July 2018 and later SingHealth made a police report on the 12 July 2018 upon confirming the cyber attack on its system.
It was noteworthy that the hackers had chosen a less secured route in attacking the country’s healthcare system networks rather than highly protected site such as government websites or defence departments.
A organised state Cyber-Attack or political shaming move?
The prized target of the cyber-attack seemed bend on in drawing out the medical information of the country’s top politicians, namely Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong and Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.
Thus, the city-state’s authority viewed the cyberattack on the healthcare system as “deliberate, targeted and well-planned” cyberattack, bearing some trademark of state-sponsored hacking.
For instance, the hacker continued its unauthorised access to the healthcare system even though its action had been detected, showing the confidence, resourcefulness and the capability of the hacker to get away unscathed.
If the cyber-attack is indeed a state-sponsored one, the local media pointed out that there is only a few countries of the world that are capable of such attacks.
Singapore: the Gibraltar of the East for cyber-security
As the investigation of the breaches continued to unfold, one thing is certain that the famed Smart Nation, or the pet project taken by Singapore had been cracked despite boosting a formidable Cyber Security Agency (CSA), touted as one of the bests in the region.
Thus, the aftermath of the data breach may have fallen short of its goals – be its political agendas or simply financial motives of selling confidential patients’ data. However, the attack had afflicted a bigger blow to the country’s aspiration in cyber-space domination.
As the saying goes, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, the Hackwarenews team truly hoped the island-nation will bounce from this setback and lived up to its name of ‘Gibraltar of the East’ in cyber-security.
BREAKING NEWS
Ransom attacks on high profile Instagram accounts
Ransom attacks on high profile Instagram accounts. There has been wave of attacks in which hackers demand bitcoin in order for the Instagram user to get their account back, they threaten to delete the account if the ransom isn’t paid.
There have been several victims of this attack, and they all claim to have received the same message from an attacker named “Pumpam”. The message lets the victim know that the hackers have possession of the account, and to email a particular address in order to start the recovery. It also mentions that the account will be deleted within 3 hours if there is no response.
Victims of the attack found that they could not recover the account through Instagram, as the account’s email address had been changed. This frustration and desperation to get possession of their accounts lead some users to pay the ransom. However, this wasn’t always successful, with some victims claiming that their account was still deleted.
Many of the victims feel let down by Instagram after they didn’t play an active role in helping them gain control of their accounts. Victims felt frustrated dealing with Instagram’s customer support when they only received generic responses to the issue, however this changed when vice’s tech arm Motherboard contacted Instagram about the issue and helped the users get possession back.
At present few details are known about the hacking campaign, including the hacker’s identities and where they are from. We urge Instagram users to be vigilant about their account security, make sure you have a secure password, that you back up your content in the event it is deleted, and don’t click on any nefarious looking links.
Photo by Katka Pavlickova on Unsplash
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BREAKING NEWS
50 Million accounts exposed after Facebook security breach
50 Million accounts exposed after Facebook security breach. Facebook has revealed that almost 50 million of its users accounts were left exposed due to a security flaw. Facebook has more than two billion active monthly users, making security a high priority concern. The security breach has caused Facebook’s shares to drop by 3% on Friday, 28 September.
The breach was discovered this week, and is the latest controversy surrounding Facebook after British company Cambridge Analytica gained access to information of 87 million users, and the controversy surrounding disinformation in elections. However, this breach has been the largest in the company’s 14-year history.
Facebook has said the attackers exploited two bugs in the site’s “View as” feature. The feature, which was designed to give users a clearer view of their presence and more control over their privacy, allows users to check what information other people can see about them. The flaw allowed users to gain “access tokens” which allow access to accounts, through Facebook’s video-uploading program for birthday celebrations. Although it’s not yet known when the attack happened, it seems to occurred after the video-uploading program was introduced. Attacked attempted to harvest user’s personal identifiable information (PII). After the attack was discovered, Facebook forced 90 million users to log out. Facebook has not announced where in the world the 50 million users are.
There have been some major changes in Facebook’s security teams after its Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos left in August this year for a teaching position at Stanford University. Facebook decided to split the team members so that security employees work within different teams across the company, in order to make security an innate part of Facebook.
Facebook’s data breach was a trending topic on Friday with users posting the breaking story as news outlets released it. User’s found that some of their posts were removed because Facebook’s algorithm saw them as suspicious activity or spam.
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BREAKING NEWS
US Online Retail Company suffered a data breach affecting 6.5 million customers
US Online Retail Company suffered a data breach affecting 6.5 million customers. SHEIN debuted in 2008, and steadily grew to become one of the most acclaimed online women’s fashion stores. Their aim is to provide cutting edge fashion with an affordable price tag. The website primarily caters to women age 16-35, and is US based but ships to over 80 countries.
They recently discovered that their servers had been compromised by hackers in an attack that spanned from June 2018 until 22 August 2018 when the threat was recognised. Once SHEIN were away of the threat, they acted immediately, scanning the servers for weaknesses that were exploited and removed all possible back door entry points to the servers.
SHEIN have been selective with what information they have shared with the public; however we do know that email addresses and encrypted password information was obtained from the attack. We recommend that if you have an account with SHEIN, that you change your password as soon as possible, it is also good practise to use different passwords as often as you can, and make them complex, a password manager can help you keep track of your passwords.
The only promising news about this incident is that SHEIN don’t believe any payment card details were obtained by the hackers. However, SHEIN have enlisted an international forensic cyber security team to conduct a thorough investigation into the breach, and as a result will update users on their data if new information comes to light over the coming months.
If you do believe your payment card information has been compromised, the best thing to do is to contact your bank immediately, they will be able to issue a new card and enact any necessary security measures.
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