Worldwide ‘Catalytic’ Cyber Attack
Described as being a ‘catalytic event’ that has impacted ICT businesses and their customers world wide, “a concerted campaign to steal commercial secrets from the customers of MSPs” has occurred. Alastair MacGibbon (head of Australian Cyber Security Centre) has released a video post on Youtube saying that this event should be a major wake-up call as to the risks associated with the theft of commercial assets. Significant and ongoing, at this stage, it is difficult to assess the full extent of damage to Australian organisations.
AusTender becomes bait for phishers
Would-be tenderers to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development have been targeted by phishers using a fake AusTender landing page and emails. Invoking a sense of urgency, the fake site claims the deadlines for tenders is no later than January 28, 2019. Currently, there are no known compromises; however; companies should be wary of unsolicited emails claiming to be from the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development.
NAB Online Banking & cards problems blamed on Data Centre
The National Australia Bank has revealed that the online infrastructure glitches were caused by problems in its data centre. Intermittent problems with its mobile abb, NAB connect and internet banking services are being investigated to sort out problems such as balances not displaying correctly across it’s Internet Banking, NAB Connect and ATM’s. NAB is currently going through a 3-year transformation and investing in technology to allow them to be more reliable, change quicker and be more efficient for customers.
North Korean Ransomware Attack
A server outage at a major US newspaper publishing company that prevented the distribution of many leading US newspapers has been attributed to ransomware used by active Lazarus Group which operates out of a Chinese city just north of North Korea. Unlike spray-and-pray ransomware, Ryuk is carried out manually by attackers and specifically built for focused infections so that only crucial assets and resources are encrypted in an attack. The infected publishing company has said in a statement that “the personal data of our subscribers, online users, and advertising clients has not been comprised”. They are continuing to investigate the situation.
Microsoft Hikes Enterprise Cloud Prices for Australians
Microsoft have announced they will increase prices for commercial cloud products such as Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics by as much as 8 percent. Coming into effect from 1st January 2019, the new prices will apply to all commercial cloud products sold via volume licensing agreements including commercial, government, education and not-for-profit customers. The price hike is the first in more than three years and was made to more closely align to online services pricing in other markets.
Biggest Data Breaches of 2018
Data – the new oil, our information has value and as such we need to stop reusing passwords, saving personal and payment information online and we need to fight for our data. Big companies we trust are getting breached more often and on a larger scale than ever before with more than 100 million people affected during 2018. Companies such as Marriott, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Under Armour are just a few of the companies affected during 2018.
Counted down by Dashlane Blog; view the top 20 Data Breaches of 2018.
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