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Cybersecurity Threat Breakdown [MyHeritage, Coca-Cola]

June 28, 2018

MyHeritageHack

Here’s your monthly roundup of the latest hacks and data breaches around the world. In this monthly series, we’ll share information and updates on the most recent hacks that have made headlines, including causes, resolutions, and what you can do to protect your data.


Over the last several weeks, we saw what has now become the usual list of successful cyber attacks and data breaches across all industries, with healthcare and retail dominating the list.    


MyHeritage

The genealogy and DNA testing company revealed that they experienced a data break involving the theft of usernames and passwords of 90 million of their customers. While MyHeritage did use hashing to protect the passwords, they only found out about the breach from an unnamed security researcher.  This poses a threat to users of the site, since the source and full extent of the breach have yet to be determined. Read More.

Bycyklen

The company who runs Copenhagen’s public city bikes system recently experienced an attack that deleted their entire database, effectively locking users out of access to the public bike system. It appears that the hacker didn’t steal any user information, rather they just went after the business itself. Typically we see ransomware attacks hit healthcare organizations and other industries, and make the victims pay a ransom to unlock the database, so it’s interesting to see hackers go after a low-value industry in the same manner. Read More.

Coca-Cola

Last year, Coca-Cola found out that a former employee initiated a security breach when they took with them a flash drive containing personal information for over 8,000 employees. The breach was only made public now, due to an ongoing investigation by law enforcement. While they do not believe the information was stolen for identity theft, Coca-Cola is offering the affected employees free Identity Monitoring for the next year. This is a warning to companies that threats do not always come from external sources. Read More.

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Simplii Financial

The Canadian bank experienced a breach recently when personal and account information for well over 40,000 users of CIBC and BMO were stolen by hackers. What makes this spear phishing attack unique, is that it turns out it was the hackers themselves that broke the story to the organization and to the media, demanding a $1 million ransom. The full extent of the breach is still being determined, however Simplii has promised customers that any money lost because of fraudulent activities will be returned to them. Read More.

Ticketfly

At the end of May, Ticketfly experienced a cyber attack that affected 27 million accounts. Information that was stolen included names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. Not only were customers affected, but with the Ticketfly website going down, venues who use Ticketfly had to find alternative methods of selling tickets, with some even postponing or cancelling events Through their investigation, Ticketfly was able to confirm that no credit card or debit card information was accessed by the hackers. Read More.

And while this breach happened all the way back in 2016, it’s making news again.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Australia’s largest bank lost the financial history of 12 million of their customers, amounting to one of the largest privacy breaches in Australia to date. 10 years of bank statements were lost after a subcontractor lost several drives containing the data. The whole reason this story is making news again, is that the bank chose not to tell the affected customers, believing the likelihood the of the data being recovered by anyone was minimal. This just goes to further emphasize the importance of securing data not just digitally, but physically as well, since human error can still be a main cause of breaches. Read More.

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Heartbeats Packets Inside the Bypass TAP

If the inline security tool goes off-line, the TAP will bypass the tool and automatically keep the link flowing. The Bypass TAP does this by sending heartbeat packets to the inline security tool. As long as the inline security tool is on-line, the heartbeat packets will be returned to the TAP, and the link traffic will continue to flow through the inline security tool.

If the heartbeat packets are not returned to the TAP (indicating that the inline security tool has gone off-line), the TAP will automatically 'bypass' the inline security tool and keep the link traffic flowing. The TAP also removes the heartbeat packets before sending the network traffic back onto the critical link.

While the TAP is in bypass mode, it continues to send heartbeat packets out to the inline security tool so that once the tool is back on-line, it will begin returning the heartbeat packets back to the TAP indicating that the tool is ready to go back to work. The TAP will then direct the network traffic back through the inline security tool along with the heartbeat packets placing the tool back inline.

Some of you may have noticed a flaw in the logic behind this solution!  You say, “What if the TAP should fail because it is also in-line? Then the link will also fail!” The TAP would now be considered a point of failure. That is a good catch – but in our blog on Bypass vs. Failsafe, I explained that if a TAP were to fail or lose power, it must provide failsafe protection to the link it is attached to. So our network TAP will go into Failsafe mode keeping the link flowing.

Glossary

  1. Single point of failure: a risk to an IT network if one part of the system brings down a larger part of the entire system.

  2. Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.

  3. Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.

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