Data Security

The U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) falls short of critical cybersecurity standards, according to an audit issued by the Department of Defense Inspector General. The report issued by the Inspector General’s office details several basic lapses in security protocols at five separate locations, including: A lack of multifactor authentication to access BMDS technical information Known and unpatched network...

The cyberattack on the Marriott hotel chain that exposed the information of up to 500 million guests was most likely conducted by Chinese state-affiliated hackers, according to a preliminary investigation. Unnamed government sources for the New York Times and Washington Post familiar with the investigation of the breach have said that the methods utilized by the hackers, as well...

A bug on Facebook gave app developers unauthorized access to the photos of as many as 6.8 million users. The bug, which affected Facebook’s photo API, was active from September 13 through September 25, when it was discovered by Facebook and fixed. September 25 was coincidentally the same day the company announced a massive security breach that affected 30...

A New York Times report about the ways smartphone apps track users and sell their location data (on a far greater scale than most customers realize) has gotten much deserved attention this week. One data sample obtained by the Times showed records of a company updating users’ locations up to 14,000 times a day in 2017. While many users allow...

Hackers stole tens of millions of dollars from Eastern European banks in a campaign called “DarkVishnya.” The method deployed by the hackers relied on devices connected at the physical location of the targets, rather than attempting to breach networks remotely. There were several steps to the hack. The first step involved planting in the target banks a device. There...

The Mozilla Foundation has released the second installation of *Privacy Not included, the organization’s annual privacy guide to internet-connected gifts. The list was started to promote the idea that privacy and security by design can and should be a major selling point. Mozilla is the non profit organization behind the popular open source Firefox web browser. It released the...

Email accounts of four top officials at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) were successfully hacked during the 2018 midterm elections. The NRCC announced the hack on Tuesday through spokesman Ian Prior, and attributed it to “an unknown entity.” “pon learning about the intrusion, the NRCC immediately launched an internal investigation and notified the FBI, which is now investigating the...

The data of 114 million businesses and individuals has been discovered in an unprotected database. The information exposed included the full name, employer, email, address, phone number and IP address of 56,934,021 individuals, and the revenues and employee counts for up to 25 million business entities. Hackenproof, the Estonian cybersecurity company that found the data trove online, announced their...

Marriott announced an enormous breach of the company’s reservations database that may have potentially exposed the personally identifiable information of more than 500 million guests. If you’ve made reservations at the St. Regis, Westin, Sheraton, W Hotels or anywhere else that operates on Marriott’s Starwood guest reservation database, it’s time to redouble your cybersecurity and privacy efforts, because this compromise is...

Amazon was hit with a data breach just days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping time of the year. The major data breach exposed names and email addresses of customers due to a technical error on their website. Amazon emailed their customers Tuesday, November 20, 2018 stating the following: “Our website inadvertently disclosed your email address or name and email...