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Reuters: Zoom video conferencing app’s user base grew by another 50% to 300 million in the last three weeks, as the company fought to quell a backlash around security and safety that has seen a number of governments and firms ban its applications.
American Banker: The agency has been informing applicants for its EIDL program by paper mail that it discovered the data breach on March 25. It said in its letter that it disabled the website, took steps to prevent the breach from happening again and is offering identity theft protection services to victims through ID Experts.
Reuters: The bug, which also exists on iPads, was discovered by ZecOps, a San Francisco-based mobile security forensics company, while it was investigating a sophisticated cyberattack against a client that took place in late 2019. Zuk Avraham, ZecOps’ chief executive, said he found evidence the vulnerability was exploited in at least six cybersecurity break-ins.
CNBC: Within minutes of the U.K. government’s furlough scheme going live, it was targeted by opportunistic hackers impersonating the country’s tax collection agency.
ETFExpress: The virus has debilitated regions, and decimated sectors with an unparalleled level of speed and ferocity. Its impact on companies and business models has been indiscriminate, hurting particularly those companies with weaker or under-developed digital underpinnings. Stronger players have had to shock themselves into emergency measures designed to prevent discontinuity. Companies have had to learn how to operate remotely, and virtually. And billions of people are now working from home and adjusting to virtual workplaces thanks to teleconferencing services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
HedgeWeek: With the closure of non-essential workplaces during the Covid-19 pandemic shaking up the way financial services companies do business, the remote working environment is raising an assortment of operational challenges for hedge fund firms, spanning communication technology, data and information security, and infrastructure vulnerability.
The target: Zoom, a popular videoconferencing service
The take: More than 500,000 username/password combinations, along with personal meeting URLs and HostKeys for active Zoom accounts were found currently for sale on the dark web.
The attack vector: Security researchers suspect that the list was not stolen from Zoom directly, but was rather compiled through ‘password stuffing’ attacks – where e-mail/password combinations from past breaches are tried against different sites and services. Attackers take previously breached username/password combinations and cycle through login attempts using the breached credentials – the successful combinations are compiled and sold.
This incident highlights a few key issues – namely, for individuals, the risks inherent in password re-use: this incident confirms that at least 500,000 active Zoom users are still re-using known compromised passwords, which attackers can use to gain control of their other accounts.
Institutionally, it highlights reputational issues – while this particular list of credentials was not exposed directly by Zoom, attackers are using the service’s popularity to market the list, and it gives the appearance of being yet another in a string of recent security incidents the videoconferencing service has had to answer for.
ZDNet: Router vendor Linksys has locked user accounts on its Smart WiFi cloud service and is asking users to reset passwords after hackers have been observed hijacking accounts and changing router settings to redirect users to malware sites.
Reuters: U.S. government officials warned on April 15, 2020 about the threat of North Korean hackers, calling particular attention to banking and other financial services.
Financial Times Adviser: In an email to advisers, sent last week (April 9), Prudential said it had been alerted to a number of emails which “at first glance” looked to be from a Prudential email account.
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