CYBER SECURITY NEWS – WEEK OF JANUARY 09, 2023
NJ hospital CentraState diverting patients after cyberattack, IT shutdown
- Officials say the hospital is facing “some technical problems related to an IT security issue” and are operating under care diversion processes, sending incoming patients to area hospitals in response to the network outages.
- The hospital is operating under electronic health record downtime procedures with paper processes, which has enabled the hospital to continue logging patient care through available records on site.
- Officials assert that patient care has not been adversely affected.
Burger chain Five Guys discloses data breach impacting job applicants
- US burger chain Five Guys has disclosed a data breach impacting job applicants, and the company may be facing a lawsuit over the cybersecurity incident.
- Five Guys appears to have started informing customers on December 29, when it also notified state authorities about the incident.
- It’s not uncommon for companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents just before or during major holidays in an effort to avoid too much media coverage. However, Five Guys’ data breach notification was noticed by Turke & Strauss, a law firm specializing in data breaches.
- The law firm, which is urging impacted individuals to get in touch to discuss potential legal action against the fast food chain, revealed that exposed information includes names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.
UK schools hit by mass leak of confidential data
- Confidential data from 14 UK schools has been leaked online by hackers following attacks that took place in 2022.
- The leaked documents include children’s SEN information, pupil passport scans, staff pay scales and contract details.
- The information was leaked after the impacted schools refused to pay the attackers ransom demands.
- The attacks and leaks were believed to be perpetrated by the threat actor Vice Society, which has conducted numerous ransomware and extortion campaigns targeting education institutions in the UK and US.
Meta hit with 390 million Euro fine over EU data breaches
- US social media giant Meta was slapped Wednesday with fines totaling 390 million euros ($413 million) for breaching EU personal data laws on Facebook and Instagram, Ireland’s data regulator said.
- Meta and other US Big Tech firms have been hit by huge fines over their business practices in the European Union in recent years and the bloc has also tightened online regulation.
- The Irish Data Protection Commission said in a statement that Meta breached “its obligations in relation to transparency” and used an incorrect legal basis “for its processing of personal data for the purpose of behavioural advertising”.
- The watchdog reached “final decisions” to fine Meta Ireland 210 million euros in relation to Facebook and 180 million euros in relation to Instagram, for violating Europe’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Hacker selling data allegedly stolen from Volvo cars following ransomware attack
- A hacker is offering to sell data allegedly stolen from Swedish vehicle manufacturer Volvo Cars following a ransomware attack carried out in late December.
- The data was put up for sale on a public hacker forum on December 31. The seller claims Volvo Cars was the target of a new ransomware operation called Endurance, which emerged in November 2022, when its operators claimed to have obtained data associated with many US government agencies.
- Those claims were disputed at the time, with some users pointing out that the leaked sample documents were already public.
- As for the alleged Volvo Cars hack, the seller said a ransom payment was not demanded because they assume the victim will not pay up.
Rackspace completes investigation into ransomware attack
- Cloud company Rackspace has completed its investigation into the recent ransomware attack and found that the hackers did access some customer resources.
- The ransomware attack only hit Rackspace’s Hosted Exchange environment, which the company was forced to shut down as a result of the incident.
- In its last update, Rackspace said the cybercriminals accessed the Personal Storage Table (PST) of 27 customers out of a total of nearly 30,000 customers.
- PSTs are typically used to store copies of messages, calendar events and other items associated with Microsoft Exchange and other Microsoft products.