WEEK OF JANUARY 10, 2022

Insecure Amazon S3 bucket exposed personal data on 500,000 Ghanaian graduates

• Cloud storage misconfiguration left sensitive data openly accessible.
• Authorities in Ghana are investigating an apparent data breach that may have exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the west African country.
• Researchers at vpnMentor say they discovered a trove of unencrypted data tied to Ghana’s National Service Secretariate (NSS) in a storage silo from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Some of the three million files related to NSS’s work and held on an AWS S3 bucket were password protected but many were not – an oversight that exposed data of an estimated 500,000-600,000 people from March 2018 to the end of 2021, vpnMentor said.

*Source

Tech vendor email breach affects dozens of health entities

• A healthcare technology vendor is notifying dozens of its healthcare provider clients of an email security breach affecting their patients’ protected health information.
• Experts say the incident serves as the latest reminder of the risks business associates pose to sensitive healthcare data.
• In a notice posted on its website, Ciox Health, an Alpharetta, Georgia-based healthcare information management vendor, says that between Nov. 23 and Dec. 30, 2021 it began the process of notifying healthcare provider customers of an email compromise last summer affecting some of their patients’ PHI.
• The affected entities include a wide range of different types of healthcare providers, including medical specialty practices such as Alabama Orthopaedic Specialists; community hospitals, such as Cameron Memorial Community Hospital; regional medical centers including Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center; and large university-affiliated health delivery networks, including Ohio State University Health System.

*Source

China to make some firms undergo a data security review before listing overseas

• The rules are aimed at companies that carry out data processing activities which could affect national security, the regulator said.
• On Feb. 15, China will implement new rules that require internet companies holding the data of more than 1 million users to undergo a network security review before listing overseas.
• Beijing has introduced a slew of new regulation on the tech sector over the past year as it looks to reign in the power of the country’s giants and stamp out anti-competitive behavior.

*Source

Cyber attackers hit data of 80K fertility patients

• Fertility Centers of Illinois’ security measures protected electronic medical records, but the attackers still got at extremely intimate data in admin files.
• The protected health information of nearly 80,000 patients of Fertility Centers of Illinois (FCI) may have been pawed over by cyber intruders following a cyberattack.
• According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights’ data breach site, the breach – reported on Dec. 27 – affected 79,943 people.
•  A subsequent investigation indicated that security systems had blocked attackers from accessing patient EMR (electronic medical records) systems. However, the intruder(s) managed to access administrative files and folders.

*Source

Bunnings customers among victims of FlexBooker data breach

• The FlexBooker data breach in December exposed 3.7 million accounts, including Bunnings customers.
• One customer was unhappy to find out from a third-party website, Have I Been Pwned​ , and not Bunnings that his data had been taken. Other customers said on social media they were also victims of the data breach.
• Bunnings used FlexBooker for click and collect orders, and the customer had used it last October during a Covid lockdown.
• Bunnings chief information officer Leah Balter​ said the company was aware of the FlexBooker data security breach, which might include the data of some customers who had booked a time slot with its drive and collect service. Bunnings took the security of its customers’ and employees’ personal information very seriously, she said. The company would carry out a thorough investigation into the data breach.

*Source 

New Mexico’s Bernalillo County investigates ransomware attack

• A suspected ransomware attack has led Bernalillo County officials to take systems offline and sever network connections.
• Officials report the disruption likely occurred between midnight and 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 5. They have taken affected systems offline and severed network connections, as well as notified county system vendors, which are working to solve the issue and restore system functionality.
• While county buildings and offices are closed to the public, employees are working remotely to assist the public, officials wrote in a release.

*Source