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The Target: Harcourts’s Melbourne branch, a real estate company.
The Take: Exposure of Personally Identifiable Information including: names, email addresses, home addresses, phone number, copy of signatures, photo identification, and some bank details.
The Vector: An employee’s credentials were compromised at one of Harcourt’s third-party providers, Stafflink. The breach occurred because the employee was using one of their own unsecured devices for work rather than a company issue device. The compromised credentials account allowed the attacker full access to the above personal information.
This breach is a stark reminder of how authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and more critically, why enforcing security rules and strategies is only effective if employees are using compliant devices where these rules exist. Enforcing multi-factor authentication, reasonably paced password resets, and regular social engineering and phishing awareness training are all effective strategies to mitigate these kinds of breaches to protect a firm’s customer base.
The Target: Thomson Reuters, a multi-national media conglomerate.
The Take: Exposure of sensitive company login credentials, including plain-text passwords to some third-party vendors, corporate and legal information, and logs which contain the email addresses of account holders who recently reset their passwords.
The Vector: A misconfigured Elasticsearch server was accessible over the internet to anyone with a connection.
This breach is critical reminder that authentication controls are an important piece in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, especially maintaining correct access configurations. The data exposed here can also lead to pivot attacks and targeted phishing. Multi-factor authentication, reasonably regular forced password resets, and password length and complexity rules are all effective strategies to mitigate these kinds of breaches to protect a firm’s data.
The Target: Microsoft, one of the world’s leading computer hardware and software companies.
The Take: Exposure of Personally Identifiable Information belonging to over 65,000 business entities. The data included: names, email addresses, email content, company name, phone numbers, Statement of Work documents, product offers, and more.
The Vector: A misconfigured Microsoft server was accessible over the internet to anyone with a connection.
This breach is a stark reminder that authentication controls are a critical piece in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, including maintaining correct access configurations. In addition, multi-factor authentication, reasonably regular forced password resets, and password length and complexity rules are all effective strategies to mitigate these kinds of breaches to protect a firm’s data.
The Target: American Airlines, U.S based air travel company.
The Take: Exposure of Personally Identifiable Information including: employee and customer names, dates of birth, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, driver license numbers, passport numbers, and certain medical information.
The Vector: Using a phishing attack, the threat actor compromised an employee’s Office365 account, and acting with all their permissions, exfiltrated the exposed data.
This breach is a stark reminder of the effective of social engineering attacks and how critical authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture. Enforcing multi-factor authentication, reasonably paced password resets, and regular social engineering and phishing awareness training are all effective strategies to mitigate these kinds of breaches to protect a firm’s customer base.
Cision: Agio, a leading cybersecurity and managed IT provider for financial services firms, published its inaugural 2022 Hedge Fund Managed IT Trends Report.
The Target: DoorDash, a popular food delivery company.
The Take: Exposure of Personally Identifiable Information belong to customers and employees including: names, customer delivery addresses, phone numbers, and some partial credit card information.
The Vector: The attackers breached a third-party company that DoorDash works with through a phishing attack. By using the compromised credentials, they were able to move in the vendor’s network freely and then access some of DoorDash’s own internal tools.
This breach is a stark reminder of the effective of social engineering attacks and how critical authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture. Enforcing multi-factor authentication, reasonably paced password resets, and regular social engineering and phishing awareness training are all effective strategies to mitigate these kinds of breaches to protect a firm’s customer base.
The Target: MIDC, Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation
The Take: $68,000.00
The Vector: A threat actor gained access to the firm’s CEO’s email account. With the compromised credentials, the attacker sent requests for fund transfers to an external account, to which the employees followed through.
This breach is a stark reminder of not only the importance of credential hygiene and authentication, as well as reminders about access and how attackers will be able to act with all the powers the breached accounts give them, but also for social engineering. These types of attacks exploit our innate desire to do tasks quickly without stopping to consider the nature of the request. At all times, requests for information or monetary payments should be approached with caution and deliberate, thoughtful action.
The Target: Workforce Safety & Insurance, North Dakota’s division of workplace safety and worker compensation.
The Take: Exposure of 182 records of Personally Identifiable Information including: emails between claimants and WSI, voice-mails containing information about said claims, and emails between WSI and their business partners.
The Vector: The attacker penetrated Klaviyo’s internal systems by tricking an employee to give up their company credentials through a phishing attack, allowing the threat actor to access systems with all the privileges of the stolen login.
This breach highlights critical need for employee training to protect a firm against phishing attacks. By using the exposed credentials, the attackers were able to act with all the same permissions as the affected employee. The human component of cybersecurity is a very real and important piece of the overall picture of cybersecurity posture. Furthermore, the sensitive information breached can lead to highly targeted spear-phishing attacks as it lends credence.
The Target: BharatPay, an India-based financial services firm providing cash deposits, fund transfers, and online purchasing.
The Take: Exposed 37,000 records of Personally Identifiable Information including: usernames, hashed passwords, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, transaction data (such as transaction ID and bank balance), and API keys.
The Vector: The cause of the attack was an outdated software version of PHP allowing the threat actor to inject malicious JavaScript code and have it executed. The firm had only last updated their software years ago in 2020. By exploiting a known issue, the attacker was able to penetrate the firm’s systems.
This breach highlights the ongoing and ever-present need for the regular and quick patching of all software relied upon by the firm for daily operation. When known vulnerabilities are fixed by the software company, and patches released to the public, it is incumbent upon the firm to take responsibility and deploy these patches immediately to avoid a loss of integrity and data which could have easily been prevented.
The Target: Klaviyo, an email marketing firm.
The Take: Exposure of client’s Personally Identifiable Information including: names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and two internal customer lead lists.
The Vector: The attacker penetrated Klaviyo’s internal systems by tricking an employee to give up their company credentials through a phishing attack, allowing the threat actor to access systems with all the privileges of the stolen login.
This breach highlights critical need for employee training to protect a firm against phishing attacks. By using the exposed credentials, the attackers were able to act with all the same permissions as the affected employee. The human component of cybersecurity is a very real and important piece of the overall picture of cybersecurity posture.
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