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The Target: University System of Georgia is a state government agency that operates 26 public colleges and universities in Georgia with over 340,000 students.
The Take: The cybercriminals accessed: Full or partial (last four digits) of Social Security Number, Date of Birth, Bank account number(s), Federal income tax documents with Tax ID number.
The Vector: The Clop ransomware gang leveraged a zero-day vulnerability in Progress Software MOVEit Secure File Transfer solution in late May 2023 to conduct a massive worldwide data theft campaign.
This breach is critical reminder that zero-day exploits do happen, and furthermore that patching software in a timely, effective manner is a key component of ensuring customer data is protected. Ensuring third-party vendors are deploying patches and fixes in accordance with a firm’s cybersecurity policy is an important step in an overall robust security posture.
The Target: The OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the security of software. It provides freely available resources, tools, and documentation to help organizations develop, deploy, and maintain secure software applications.
The Take: The incident impacted OWASP members from 2006 to around 2014 who provided their resumes as part of joining OWASP. Exposed resumes contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and other personally identifiable information.
The Vector: In late February 2024, the Foundation received a few support requests and became aware of a misconfiguration of OWASP’s old Wiki web server. The misconfiguration led to a data breach involving old member resumes.
This breach highlights the extreme importance of timely software updates for known software vulnerabilities, not only in systems directly under a firm’s control, but in third-party systems the firm relies upon as well. The longer a firm, or its vendors, hold out on deploying the most up-to-date software for their systems, the greater the chance an attacker will exploit the issue.
The Target: Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media and files.
The Take: Four billion public Discord messages which were publicly accessible and gathered from 14,201 servers, which are home to 627,914,396 users.
The Vector: Scraping is a method where automated tools extract information from a platform, such as Discord, by exploiting weaknesses in bots or unofficial apps’ access and interaction with the targeted platform.
This breach is a stark reminder of how strong authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and that good password hygiene plays a pivotal role in protection. Change your password, enable two-factor authentication and be mindful of sharing personal information or sensitive content within Discord chats, even on private servers.
The Target: Prisma Finance, a popular decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.
The Take: The Munchables blockchain-based game said it was attacked, and several security firms said about $62 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the game. That incident was followed by another when a hacker stole about $11.6 million from Prisma Finance.
The Vector: The theft occurred as a result of a flash loan attack. Flash loan attacks involve hackers borrowing funds that do not require collateral, buying a significant amount of a cryptocurrency to artificially raise its price and then offloading the coins. The loan is paid back and the borrower keeps any profit. The report said that once the first person had exploited the vulnerability in the platform, two others copied the same method.
This breach is a stark reminder of how strong authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and that good password hygiene plays a pivotal role in protection.
The Target: The PandaBuy online shopping platform.
The Take: The data contained approximately 1.5 million unique UserIds, First Name, Last Name, Phone Numbers, Emails, and Login IPs.
The Vector: "The data was stolen by exploiting several critical vulnerabilities in the platform's API and other bugs were identified allowing access to the internal service of the website," the threat actor said.
This breach is critical reminder that zero-day exploits do happen, and furthermore that patching software in a timely, effective manner is a key component of ensuring customer data is protected. Ensuring third-party vendors are deploying patches and fixes in accordance with a firm’s cybersecurity policy is an important step in an overall robust security posture.
The Target: Prudential Insurance — one of the largest insurers in the United States.
The Take: The company said the names, addresses, driver's license numbers or ID cards of 36,545 were accessed.
The Vector: The company filed documents with the SEC on February 13 warning that a “cybercrime group” was able to access “administrative and user data from certain information technology systems and a small percentage of Company user accounts associated with employees and contractors.”
This breach is a stark reminder of how strong authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and that good password hygiene plays a pivotal role in protection.
The Target: Okta is a San Fransisco-based cloud identity and access management solutions provider whose Single Sign-On (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and API access management services are used by thousands of organizations worldwide.
The Take: The leaked data includes user IDs, full names, company names, office addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, positions/roles, and other information.
The Vector: In October 2023, Okta warned that its support system was breached by hackers using stolen credentials, allowing attackers to steal cookies and authentication for some customers.
This breach is a stark reminder of how strong authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and that good password hygiene plays a pivotal role in protection.
The Target: Financial services firm Paysign. Paysign brought in a revenue of about $12 million last quarter through its prepaid card programs, payment processing systems and digital banking services.
The Take: 1,242,575 records containing the full names of customers, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and account balances.
The Vector: A cybercriminal with the name “emo” claimed to have taken the data and leaked it on to a hacking forum. The company declined to provide any further information regarding how the attack occurred.
With the fintech industry experiencing rapid growth, this leak stands as a clear reminder of the critical role of robust cybersecurity measures. Fintech companies manage and store exceptionally sensitive customer data. This breach is a stark reminder of how authentication controls are in an overall robust cybersecurity posture, and that good password hygiene plays a pivotal role in protection.
The Target: Houser LLP, a U.S. law firm that specializes in serving high-profile financial institutions.
The Take: The data included names and one or more of Social Security number, driver’s license number, individual tax identification number, financial account information, and medical information.
The Vector: The company said certain files were encrypted during the incident and were “copied and taken from the network.”
This breach highlights the extreme importance of timely software updates for known software vulnerabilities, not only in systems directly under a firm’s control, but in third-party systems the firm relies upon as well. The longer a firm, or its vendors, hold out on deploying the most up-to-date software for their systems, the greater the chance an attacker will exploit the issue.
The Target: Giant loan and mortgage company LoanDepot
The Take: The stolen LoanDepot customer data includes names, dates of birth, email and postal addresses, financial account numbers, and phone numbers. The stolen data also includes Social Security numbers, which LoanDepot collected from customers.
The Vector: LoanDepot was hit by a cyberattack around January 4 that it described at the time as involving the “encryption of data,” or a ransomware attack. It’s not known if LoanDepot paid a ransom.
This breach highlights the extreme importance of timely software updates for known software vulnerabilities, not only in systems directly under a firm’s control, but in third-party systems the firm relies upon as well. The longer a firm, or its vendors, hold out on deploying the most up-to-date software for their systems, the greater the chance an attacker will exploit the issue.
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