All posts tagged: cyberattack

Elon Musk Says X Outages Were Caused by a Cyberattack From Ukraine

Elon Musk Says X Outages Were Caused by a Cyberattack From Ukraine

Published by skeptic

Elon Musk is facing questions about how much attention he is paying to his businesses as he advises President Trump on the direction of the federal government. The questions have mounted as Mr. Musk’s business empire — which includes the electric car maker Tesla, the social media site X and the rocket maker SpaceX — has run into challenges. On Monday, users of X reported widespread outages. The same day, Tesla’s stock fell more than 15 percent amid concerns that include declining electric vehicle sales and politically driven protests against the manufacturer. And last week, a SpaceX rocket exploded in Florida during launch, showering some places with debris. Mr. Musk on Monday quickly blamed the X issues on a cyberattack stemming from Ukraine, without providing evidence. He posted on X that Democratic donors were responsible for seeding protests against Tesla, again without evidence. In response to the SpaceX explosion, he said on X: “Rockets are hard.” Questions about Mr. Musk’s continuing oversight of his companies are coming to a head as he spends more time …

The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising

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We’re over halfway through 2024, and already this year we have seen some of the biggest, most damaging data breaches in recent history. And just when you think that some of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do. From huge stores of customers’ personal information getting scraped, stolen and posted online, to reams of medical data covering most people in the United States getting stolen, the worst data breaches of 2024 to date have already surpassed at least 1 billion stolen records and rising. These breaches not only affect the individuals whose data was irretrievably exposed, but also embolden the criminals who profit from their malicious cyberattacks. Travel with us to the not-so-distant past to look at how some of the biggest security incidents of 2024 went down, their impact and. in some cases, how they could have been stopped.  AT&T’s data breaches affect “nearly all” of its customers, and many more non-customers For AT&T, 2024 has been a very bad year for data security. The telecoms giant confirmed not one, but two separate …

Von der Leyen’s campaign website hit by cyberattack – POLITICO

Von der Leyen’s campaign website hit by cyberattack – POLITICO

Published by skeptic

Cyber attackers targeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s electoral website using bots, she said Tuesday evening. “My campaign website ursula2024.eu was attacked by bots,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Stressing that “cyber attacks will not deter us,” von der Leyen added that she stands “for a strong Europe that can defend itself – no matter where.” In December 2023, the European Parliament’s IT department warned that state-sponsored attacks on the Parliament are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated since its last election in 2019. As 400 million EU citizens prepare to cast their votes in June’s European election, a new poll shows that the German conservative has caught voters’ attention like no EU chief before her. An overwhelming majority of 75 per cent of European respondents are able to correctly identify her — much higher than former commission chiefs — putting her at an advantage. Source link

U.K. Armed Forces’ Data Is Exposed in Hostile Cyberattack

U.K. Armed Forces’ Data Is Exposed in Hostile Cyberattack

Published by Sam

The personal information of British army, navy and air force members has been hacked in a significant data breach, raising alarm over a growing threat from cyberattacks by hostile states, Britain’s defense secretary said on Tuesday. The attack targeted a third-party payroll system used by Britain’s Ministry of Defense, exposing the names and bank details of serving members of the armed forces and some veterans, as well as a small number of addresses. The payroll system, which is not connected to the defense ministry’s own internal network, has been taken offline and the government did not publicly blame anyone for the data breach, or confirm claims by some lawmakers who pointed the finger at China. “We do have indications that this was the suspected work of a malign actor and we cannot rule out state involvement,” Grant Shapps, the defense secretary, said in a statement to Parliament. “This incident is further proof that the UK is facing rising and evolving threats,” he said, adding, “The world is, I’m afraid, becoming somewhat more dangerous.” Mr. Shapps …

Germany accuses Russia of ‘intolerable’ cyberattack, warns of consequences | Russia-Ukraine war News

Germany accuses Russia of ‘intolerable’ cyberattack, warns of consequences | Russia-Ukraine war News

Published by Sam

Germany has blamed “state-sponsored” Russian hackers for an “intolerable” cyberattack on members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and warned there would be consequences. On Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said a German federal government investigation into who was behind the 2023 cyberattack on the SPD, a leading member of the governing coalition, had just concluded. “Today we can say unambiguously [that] we can attribute this cyberattack to a group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia,” she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. “In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack on Germany, and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.” APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks around the world. The attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD was made public last year and blamed on a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook. Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior said German companies, including in the defence, aerospace and information technology sectors, as well …

Germany’s FM says Russia will face consequences for ‘intolerable’ cyberattack

Germany’s FM says Russia will face consequences for ‘intolerable’ cyberattack

Published by Sam

Germany’s top diplomat on Friday said Russia will face consequences after accusing its military intelligence service of masterminding an “absolutely intolerable” cyberattack, as NATO and European Union member countries said they will not let Russia’s “malicious” behavior in cyberspace go unanswered. Issued on: 03/05/2024 – 14:55Modified: 03/05/2024 – 16:40 2 min Relations between Russia and Germany were already tense, with Germany providing military support to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russian state hackers were behind a cyberattack last year that targeted the Social Democrats, the leading party in the governing coalition. “Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace,” she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. “We can attribute this attack to the group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia.” “This is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences,” she said. The Russian Embassy in Germany on Friday denied Moscow was involved in a 2023 cyberattack. In a statement the embassy said its envoy “categorically rejected …

Health insurance giant Kaiser will notify millions of data breach after sharing patients’ data with advertisers

Health insurance giant Kaiser will notify millions of data breach after sharing patients’ data with advertisers

Published by skeptic

U.S. health conglomerate Kaiser is notifying millions of its members of a data breach after confirming it shared patients’ information with third-party advertisers, including Google, Microsoft and X (formerly Twitter). In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Kaiser said that it conducted an investigation that found “certain online technologies, previously installed on its websites and mobile applications, may have transmitted personal information to third-party vendors.” Kaiser said that the data shared with advertisers includes member names and IP addresses, as well as information that could indicate if members were signed into a Kaiser Permanente account or service and how members “interacted with and navigated through the website and mobile applications, and search terms used in the health encyclopedia.” Kaiser said it subsequently removed the tracking code from its websites and mobile apps. Kaiser is the latest healthcare organization to confirm it shared patients’ personal information with third-party advertisers by way of online tracking code, often embedded in web pages and mobile apps and designed to collect information about users’ online activity for analytics. Over the past …

UnitedHealth says Change hackers stole health data on ‘substantial proportion of people in America’

UnitedHealth says Change hackers stole health data on ‘substantial proportion of people in America’

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Health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed that a ransomware attack on its health tech subsidiary Change Healthcare earlier this year resulted in a huge theft of Americans’ private healthcare data. UnitedHealth said in a statement on Monday that a ransomware gang took files containing personal data and protected health information that it says may “cover a substantial proportion of people in America.” The health insurance giant did not say how many Americans are affected but said the data review was “likely to take several months” before the company would begin notifying individuals that their information was stolen in the cyberattack. Change Healthcare processes insurance and billing for hundreds of thousands of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practices across the U.S. healthcare sector; it has access to massive amounts of health information on about half of all Americans. UnitedHealth said it had not yet seen evidence that doctors’ charts or full medical histories were exfiltrated from its systems. The admission that hackers stole Americans’ health data comes a week after a new hacking group began publishing …

Lawmakers vote to reauthorize US spying law that critics say expands government surveillance

Lawmakers vote to reauthorize US spying law that critics say expands government surveillance

Published by skeptic

Lawmakers passed legislation early Saturday reauthorizing and expanding a controversial U.S. surveillance law shortly after the powers expired at midnight, rejecting opposition by privacy advocates and lawmakers. The bill, which passed on a 60-34 vote, reauthorizes powers known as Section 702 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to collect the communications of foreign individuals by accessing records from tech and phone providers. Critics, including lawmakers who voted against the reauthorization, say FISA also sweeps up the communications of Americans while spying on its foreign targets. White House officials and spy chiefs rallied behind efforts to reauthorize FISA, arguing the law prevents terrorist and cyber attacks and that a lapse in powers would harm the U.S. government’s ability to gather intelligence. The Biden administration claims the majority of the classified information in the president’s daily intelligence briefing derives from the Section 702 program. Privacy advocates and rights groups rejected the reauthorization of FISA, which does not require the FBI or the NSA to obtain a warrant before searching the Section 702 …

Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?

Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?

Published by skeptic

The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine. It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and is held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum. Much of it relies on open-source software that is thanklessly maintained by a small army of volunteer programmers who fix the bugs, patch the holes and ensure the whole rickety contraption, which is responsible for trillions of dollars in global G.D.P., keeps chugging along. Last week, one of those programmers may have saved the internet from huge trouble. His name is Andres Freund. He’s a 38-year-old software engineer who lives in San Francisco and works at Microsoft. His job involves developing a piece of open-source database software known as PostgreSQL, whose details would probably bore you to tears if I could explain them correctly, which I can’t. Recently, while doing some routine maintenance, Mr. Freund inadvertently found a backdoor hidden in a piece of software that is part of the Linux operating …