The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst, and a guy with a passion for all things security. Any more questions? Just ask.
Verizon Call Logs Found Exposed Online
Over the past month, researchers have been learning more about the recent discovery of unsecured customer service call records for over 14 million individuals on an Amazon server. The server in question is controlled by Nice Systems, an enterprise software company based in Israel, and contained call logs from January through June of this year. In the unencrypted records were customers’ names and their Verizon account login credentials. Even after Verizon became aware of the server’s vulnerability, it took over a week to get it properly secured by Nice Systems.
Bupa Healthcare Services Breached
In the last week, international healthcare provider Bupa was the victim of a data breach that included basic customer information, such as names, birthdates, and nationalities. The breach originated with an employee incorrectly transferring data between systems of Bupa Global, which handles international health insurance for frequent travelers—around 108,000 customers in total. The affected branch of Bupa has contacted all affected customers, and has stated that no other branches worldwide have been compromised.
Botnets Distributing New Point-of-Sale Malware
With the recent influx of botnet-related cyberattacks in the last year, it’s hardly surprising that Point-of-Sale malware is now spreading through the same channels. A variant that currently only affects Brazilian companies, LockPOS, has proven difficult to track. It makes minimal noise on the systems it infects, and spreads quickly using the FlokiBot botnet. Researchers have found samples as recent as June 24th that use the standard two-stage approach for downloading the LockPOS payload to the victim’s system.
Cryptocurrency Miner Nearly Tops Mac Malware List
In the past month, an old bitcoin miner that originally appeared in 2011 has been making a staggering reoccurrence across Mac® computers, and is involved in over 20% of all Mac malware detections in June. By spreading through malicious Mac torrent sites, it is likely being used to mine multiple different cryptocurrencies, while also stealing any cryptocurrency wallets it finds on the infected machines.
Ex-Employees Can be Major Data Security Concern
A recent study of IT-directors across the UK revealed nearly half of all ex-employees still have access to corporate networks and drives. Even worse, of the 600 companies surveyed, nearly 25% had experienced a data breach caused by a recently released employee. While the majority of survey participants have procedures in place for de-provisioning former employees, their processes are not automated, and must be completed manually. This leaves potentially lengthy (and dangerous) gaps between an employee’s departure and subsequent offboarding.
