German politicians, uncovered
A group of hackers published on the Internet personal data of numerous German politicians, including Foreign Minister Angela Merkel.Among the information leaked by criminals were mobile phone numbers and postal addresses, as well as internal documents of parties, personal bank documents and information about families. Related
But what happened in Germany was the icing on a year 2018 that has been fierce in cybersecurity issues.In this post we will remember the biggest gaps of the past year, the times when cybercriminals made the business world tremble:
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
In March, the scandal of Facebook and the British company Cambridge Analytica broke out.The data of some 87 million users of the social network were shared without their knowledge or consent, and for an alleged investigation that really had political purposes.It was a hacking in the strict sense, but I leave in evidence the security and protection systems of the social network of Mark Zuckerberg.Facebook saw the actions of his company collapse in the stock market and Zuckerberg had to give explanations before the very Government of the United States.
Ransomware against Atlanta
After Wannacry, the ransomware has continued to do its thing.Also in March, the city of Atlanta, in the US, suffered a great cyberattack of ransomware that paralyzed most of the municipal systems, which caused permanent damage that even led to the disappearance of years of police video records.In some cases, data hijackers demanded a payment of about 43,000 euros in bitcoins. ransomware attack , this time, was not aimed at a large cloud provider, such as Amazon or Google, or a large corporation, but rather a city hall and the infrastructure it manages.
Under Armor does not escape either
In March the cybercriminals coup rang again, but this time about the Under Armor sportswear company, at that time, the company admitted the theft of data from its MyFitnessPal application, which had exposed usernames , email addresses and passwords.In total, 150 million affected users, although Under Armor said the information was encrypted.
Mexican banks, against the ropes
In April, the governor of the Bank of Mexico had no choice but to recognize that the entity's electronic transfer system had been attacked.At that time, five banks in the country-among them Citibanamex, Banorte and Banejercito-detected subtractions of unauthorized money from at least 150 bank accounts created for that purpose.The money transferred illegally was withdrawn in a matter of minutes.It was a fast and precise operation, of which the scope is still unknown today, but there is talk of a subtraction of between 400 and 800 million pesos (between 17 and 35 million euros).
10 million Jobandtalent users
In July of this year, the Jobandtalent placement company was the victim of a cyberattack.In fact, personal data (names, surnames, email addresses...), as well as an encrypted version of the password of their More than 10 million Spanish users were exposed on the network and therefore made available to cybercriminals.
T-Mobile doesn't know either save
In the middle of summer, in August, one of the most popular mobile operators in the United States, T-Mobile, which belongs to Germany's Deutsche Telekom, suffered a data leak that affected more than two million customers.potentially compromised data included user names, billing postal codes, telephone numbers, email addresses, account numbers and account types.
Facebook returns to the spotlight
Only two months later, Facebook again made headlines due to a massive theft of personal data from its users.In September, a computer attack on the social network left 50 million users exposed.This was made possible thanks to a "vulnerability" in the platform code that affected the "see how" mode, as explained by its creator days after the event.
500 million Marriott customers
Marriot, one of the world's leading hotel chains, warned in November of a security breach through its Starwood subsidiary that affected 500 million customers.Among the stolen information were passport numbers, emails and even , credit card numbers, yes, the gap in question, one of the largest in history by its scope, dates from 2014.
British Airways, attacked from Romania
Around 380,000 credit cards of British Airways airline customers were exposed to a cyber attack that stole personal information from travelers.According to the airline, the data was stolen from the website and the mobile application.They accessed this information by installing a malware that transferred the information to servers located in Romania.
The attacks put the lace on Google+
The Google social network has not set and the search engine has already said that it closes next April.In addition, the hackers also put their grain of sand.At the beginning of 2018 it was learned that confidential data of half a million users had been discovered, such as names, jobs or emails.At the end of the year, the search engine recognized that the problem, which comes from 2015, had affected no less than 52 million users.
It also suffers the hardware : Intel and Meltdown
The most virulent attacks are not always suffered by the software in the form of a website or mobile phone application.Sometimes criminals aim at the hardware .Earlier this year, Intel, which provides processors to 9 out of 10 computers and servers sold worldwide, recognized that someone was exploiting the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities, so they could access information hosted on such devices.
Intel, and other chip manufacturers that were affected, responded with updates of firmware , and Microsoft also rushed to offer updates to its operating systems.However, experts say the problem it will not be totally eradicated until new chips with designs that avoid these vulnerabilities completely replace existing ones.
Images | iStock/AlexBrylov/mactrunk/scyther5
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