Breaches – Page 16 – Cyber Law Watch

ABS blames IBM for Census fail in damning report

Sep 26 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has blamed the 2016 Census website failure on IBM in a damning Senate inquiry submission. ABS chief statistician David Kalisch said the infrastructure offered by IBM did not adequately prepare for “not unusual” and “anticipated” denial of service attacks on Census night, which ultimately caused the site to be taken down for security reasons. You can read the submission, which was made available online by The Guardian here.

Have I been pwned?

Sep 13 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

Information security blog {ride the lightning} has featured Troy Hunt’s “Have I been pwned” website which identifies whether your online account has ever been compromised in a data breach when you enter your account’s login ID.

Troy Hunt describes himself on his website as a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional awardee for Developer Security, blogger at troyhunt.com, international speaker on web security and the author of many top-rating security courses for web developers on Pluralsight. While we don’t know much about his site, it is reported to be safe and provides a very handy tool to determine if you have been unknowingly hacked. Of course, even if the site is legitimate, who is to say it won’t be breached? It’s just that it’s so useful.

See if you have been pwned here…and yes…we both have been.

Bitcoin operators exposed to cyber threats

Sep 01 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

Reuters has reported that a third of bitcoin trading platforms have been hacked, and nearly half have closed since they entered the scene 6 years ago. This increasing risk for bitcoin holders is compounded by the fact there is no depositor’s insurance to absorb the loss. That approach heightens cybersecurity risks and also exposes the fact that bitcoin investors have little choice but to do business with under-capitalized exchanges.

This issue was evident when Bitfinex was hacked earlier this month and an estimated $70 million in bitcoin was stolen. The virtual bank’s customers were forced to share the losses resulting in a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%. Read our blog post on this hacking here.

Experts say trading venues acting like banks such as Bitfinex will remain vulnerable. These exchanges act as custodial wallets in which they control users’ digital currencies like banks control customer deposits. However, unlike their brick-and-mortar counterparts, when customers’ bitcoin accounts are hacked, there is currently no third party that can step in to deal with the theft. As a result, these underfunded exchanges require nearly perfect security.

Given this it is not surprising that certain governments around the world are exploring the possibility of central bank issued digital currencies using distributed ledger technology which could compete with the private digital currency systems such as bitcoin. Read more on this here.

Ashley Madison data breach joint findings released

Sep 01 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim and The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien have released a joint report on the data breach of cheating website Ashley Madison which affected approximately 36 million Ashley Madison user accounts last year. Read our post on the breach here.

Controversially, despite the company not having a physical presence in Australia, the Commissioners found that Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media (ALM) was regulated as an “APP entity” due to the fact that it carried on business and collected personal information in Australia. This finding was based on the fact that ALM conducted marketing in Australia, targeted Australian residents for its services and collected the personal information of Australians.

ALM agreed to a number of enforceable undertakings to the Commissioner. Amongst other things, ALM has undertaken to augment its security framework, provide extensive security training for staff and cease its practice of retaining the information of users with deleted, deactivated or inactive accounts. Consistent with the trend in undertakings it requires independent verification of certain compliance steps. Find the undertakings here.

It also seeks to address the accuracy of the records, which is a challenge for a cheating website. Letting someone sign up using for example Tony Blair’s email address captured the attention of the regulators. They focused on the interests under Privacy laws of those whose email addresses were falsely added to the sign up. A confirming email with an option to opt out was not considered an adequate measure.

Government committed to introducing Mandatory Data Breach Notification laws

Aug 22 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

After much delay, a spokesperson for Attorney-General, George Brandis has said the government is committed to introducing the Mandatory Data Breach Notification laws this year. We will be sure to look out for it during the next term of Parliament. You can find more information on the proposed scheme and its regulatory impact on the Attorney General’s Department consultation for Serious Data Breach Notification webpage.

Oracle’s Point-of-Sale division targeted by professional hackers

Aug 17 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

Oracle confirmed last week that its security was breached by a Russian organized cybercrime group infamous for hacking retailers and banks. Alarmingly, Oracle’s MICROS point-of-sale credit card payment system was one of the systems targeted in the attack. While the impact of the breach is still being investigated, the attack could have had wide impact. MICROS is one of the top three point-of-sale vendors worldwide and sells point-of-sale systems used at more than 330,000 cash registers globally.

It has been reported that Oracle became aware of the breach after its staff discovered malicious code on the MICROS customer support portal and systems. It is thought that the hackers installed malware on the troubleshooting portal in order to capture customers’ credentials as they logged in. Usernames and passwords could then be used to access customer accounts and remotely control MICROS point-of-sales terminals.

The attack has been linked to crime gang, Carbanak Gang, which has been accused of stealing more than $1 Billion from banks and retailers in the past. These guys clearly know what they are doing.

Was Mickey Mouse hacked?

Aug 02 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

Disney Interactive has notified users of its Playdom Forum that hackers have stolen personal information, which could put their privacy and online security at risk. The hackers acquired usernames, email addresses, and passwords for playdomforums.com accounts as well as IP addresses. Disney has not disclosed how many users have been affected, although the forum is said to have over 350,000 members. Read Disney Interactive’s statement here.

EU-US Privacy Shield approved

Jul 12 2016

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Simon Ly and Rowena Baer

When the Safe Harbour arrangements were struck down the EU and US worked to create a replacement and flesh out the details of this new arrangement (see our last article on this issue here). We have all been somewhat nervously watching to see if the new ‘Privacy Shield’ would get final approval amid some criticism from some quarters. Good news, last Friday the EU member states on the Article 31 Committee voted to approve a revised Privacy Shield.

The new arrangement provides a welcome measure of certainty for businesses whose Trans-Atlantic data transfers have been left in legal limbo since the European Court of Justice declared the longstanding Safe Harbor Framework invalid in October 2015.

The European Commission has released a statement expressing their confidence in the adoption of the new Privacy Shield, noting that the new pact is “fundamentally different” from its predecessor. The new Privacy Shield imposes “clear and strong obligations on companies handling the data and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice”.

International tech industry groups have also praised the move as a win for both consumers and businesses as the pact provides robust consumer privacy protections. Voicing their support of the Privacy Shield, Microsoft released a detailed blog post on how the Privacy Shield is progress for privacy rights, declaring that the regime is an “important achievement for the privacy rights of citizens across Europe, and for companies across all industries that rely on international data flows to run their businesses and serve their customers”.

Whilst we are still at the early stages, companies should begin assessing the Privacy Shield’s impact on their existing agreements and also more broadly their data strategy, keeping in mind that the regime relates only to EU-US data transfers. In particular, consideration should be given to the transitional arrangements in the Privacy Shield. Companies should also be aware of the potential challenges to this regime (and related issues post-Brexit) as there is concern about the shelf life of the Privacy Shield.

For more information, please see the EU’s page here and the US’s page here.

Agreed changes to EU-US Privacy Shield strengthens data transfer pact

Jun 28 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Giles Whittaker

The US and the European Union reportedly reached an agreement on the language of a key data transfer pact, including clearer limits on U.S. surveillance and stricter rules for companies holding information of Europeans. The updated EU-US Privacy Shield was sent to EU member states, who are expected to vote on the proposal in July. The revised data transfer pact is said to include stricter cross-border data-handling rules for companies using Europeans’ information for targeted online advertising, and also has detailed the specific condition under which U.S. government intelligence services would collect data in bulk and the safeguards on how the data is used.

Meanwhile, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President and Head of International Affairs Myron Brilliant urged the EU’s member states to quickly sign off on the updated version, saying that the new framework for trans-Atlantic data transfer is critical for companies on both sides of the pond.

Further information regarding the report by Reuters can be read here.

Report finds average cost of data breach reaches $4 million

Jun 20 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Giles Whittaker

A report sponsored by IBM and conducted by the Ponemon Institute found that the average cost of a data breach has grown to $4 million, up 29% from 2013. The survey also found cybersecurity incidents continued to witness growth in both volume and sophistication, with 64% more security incidents reported in 2015 than the preceding year. According to the study, the companies lose $158 per compromised record. Also not surprisingly, breaches in highly regulated industries were even more costly. For instance, healthcare breaches reached $355 per record – a full $100 more than in 2013.

Read the full report conducted by the Ponemon Institute here.

Catagory:Breaches