Welcome to our Cybersecurity News Rundown for the month of August 2017. Here, we will be sharing latest and trending news on events and technological updates from the world of cybersecurity that happened over the past month. Make sure to visit the News Rundown by the end of every month for quick highlights and insights.
1. HBO Hack: Hackers targeted “Game of Thrones”, release unaired episodes
HBO, a unit of Time Warner Inc., suffered a massive data breach on 31st July 2017. The hackers breached into the company’s network and acquired 1.5 terabytes of data. The data comprised of the script and other content of unaired episodes of the network’s marquee series “Game of Thrones”.
HBO has conducted a forensic review of their computer systems to understand the scope of breach. The television network even offered $250,000 to the cyber criminals requesting them to extend the deadline for paying the ransom.
2. Ukraine Cyber Attack: A series of new cyber attacks happening all around
On June 27, NotPetya ransomware targeted Ukraine and took down numerous Government agencies and businesses. NotPetya spread rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals and knocked out thousands of global systems across the globe.
During mid of August, Ukrainian Central Bank warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of a new malware. Ukrainian organizations are still recovering from the significant financial damage happened during NotPetya ransomware attack.
3. Uber agrees to implement privacy audits with FTC to protect consumer data
After so many allegation and claims, Uber Technologies Inc. has finally agreed to conduct an audit in every two years for the next two decades with FTC (Federal Trade Commission) followed by a US investigation that claims that the ride-service provider firm is not able to protect personal information of drivers and passengers. The 2014 Uber data breach exposed more than 100,000 names and driver’s license numbers from the Uber’s database.
4. Abbott releases new cybersecurity updates to protect St. Jude pacemakers
Medical device maker, Abbott Laboratories, recently released new software updates designed to reduce the risk of St. Jude heart implant pacemakers. It would protect the St. Jude pacemakers from being hacked and will warn patients in emergency situations such as battery depletion, etc. Earlier this year, FDA confirmed that St. Jude Medical’s implantable cardiac devices have multiple vulnerabilities.
The announcement made by Abbott Laboratories was the second round of updates for the heart implants. Software patches are the growing concern about cybersecurity of medical devices, as they all are connected via the Internet or other networks.
5. Yahoo must face litigation over data breaches: US judge
A US judge has recently made an announcement over Yahoo data breaches. It’s clearly been said that Yahoo needs to face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of over 1 billion users. The users acclaimed that their personal information was compromised during three massive data breaches. Oath, an Internet service provider was attacked by hackers in between 2013-2016 and the hackers ended up exposing the personal information of the customers using Oath’s services.
