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Cybersecurity Threat Breakdown [TimeHop, Bithumb]

July 26, 2018

Timehop Breach

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 government/federal entities and cryptocurrency dominating the list.    

TimeHop

TimeHop, the popular service that brings past social media content back to the surface, experienced a security breach on the Fourth of July, affecting millions of users. The breach to a database of over 21 million users, occured due to a compromised access credential to the cloud. TimeHop quickly recognized the breach and successfully locked the hackers out after about 2 hours. While they were able to get access to several million email addresses and phone numbers, no financial or other private information was breached.  Read More

Singapore Health Database

Singapore experienced its worst data breach in history this month, with hackers breaching a government health database that contained medical records for 1.5 million people, or over a quarter of the county’s population. It’s likely that this attack was part of a larger campaign to gather personal health information on top level government officials. Read More

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Bithumb Crypto Exchange

Bithumb is the 6th largest trading venue in the world. Several weeks ago they experienced a hack that resulted in 35 billion Korean won (approximately $31 million) in cryptocurrency being stolen by hackers. It is believed that the XRP ledger was compromised, and it appears that Bithumb was aware of security issues several days before the successful hack, as they acknowledged there was an increase in attempted access of the network. Cryptocurrency is now one of the fastest growing industries targeted by hackers. Read More

Gas Station in Detroit

A gas station in Detroit, MI was recently the target of a hack of their gas pump monitoring system, which resulted in 10 cars getting free gas. What makes this hack troublesome, is the fact that the gas station employees had no way to shut this system down while the hack was occurring. Many SCADA devices such as gas pumps have very little security implemented, making them an easy target for hackers. The fear being that if this worked at one station, it could lead to targeted attacks of gas pumps in times of crisis where there is a ‘run on gas.’ Read More 

Malaysian Education Exam Portal

The Ministry of Education’s School Examination Analysis System (SAPS) was taken offline, after it was revealed by a source that the information on 10 million citizens was not being properly secured. SAPS is a portal that allows students, parents and government organizations to access the child’s exam results and information online. While the number of affected individuals is not as large as some other breaches, the level of personal information compromised has widespread consequences for the children now and in the future. Read More

And some hacks that occurred back in 2017 are making news again:

US Utility Grids

The Department of Homeland Security now confirmed that Russian hackers successfully broke into secured networks owned by US electric utilities. The hackers used the login credentials of current employees, making the breaches difficult to detect and remedy. During the course of the hacks of several networks, the hackers stole information on the set up, equipment used, and control information on US utility networks. This is a major issue for the industry as these hackers could have easily configured equipment to cause widespread blackouts around the country. 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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