14 DAY TRIAL // In case you’ve been busy this week with other activities, but you’re interested in finding out about the most interesting information security stories we’ve presented, here’s a quick brief.
Let’s start with the hacks. First of all, the Tunisian Cyber Army and the Al Qaida Electronic Army claim they’re making preparations for a campaign called OpBlackSummer.
The operation will be launched on May 31, but in the meantime, the hackers claim to be breaching various US government websites in an attempt to collect sensitive information which they will leak when the campaign starts.
So far, their victims are the US Department of State, the Pentagon’s Army National Guard, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP.gov), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM.gov), and various energy companies.
Many were amazed to see that hackers managed to deface an apparently-official Avast Germany website and leak the details of 20,000 users.
However, the security company’s representatives have clarified that the affected domain, avadas.de, to which users are redirected from avast.de, is operated by a third-party company which so far has refused to hand over the domain name to Avast.
And since we’re talking about data leaks, Zoosk has advised customers to change their passwords after a list of 29 million encrypted passphrases were published online. Apparently, at least 3,000 of them belong to Zoosk users, but the company says it hasn’t found any evidence of a breach in their own systems.
Another interesting data leak story is about the mysterious “Exposed” site which has started publishing the details of various celebrities, government officials and law enforcement officials. Authorities say they’re investigating the incident, but the site is still up and new names appear on it each day.
The data has been apparently stolen from credit reporting companies TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also suffered a data breach. Initially, everyone thought the downtime experienced by the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) was caused by some technical issues.
However, it appears NIST has shut down the NVD after identifying malware on a couple of web servers.
Both North Korea and South Korea have made several headlines this week. First, we learned that Seoul was preparing for potential cyberattacks launched by Pyongyang.
However, later in the week, North Korea accused South Korea and the United States of launching cyberattacks against the systems of several organizations.
North Korea is not the only country dealing with cyberattacks. Several Philippines government websites, including the one of the president, have been defaced by Anonymous Philippines.
Another story worth following is the one of Matthew Keys, a Reuters employee accused of conspiring with Anonymous to hack the site of the LA Times. The man says he’s innocent, but the FBI claims it has evidence that the case isn't about investigative journalism, as his lawyer says.
Here are some other interesting stories:
Facebook account of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell hacked.
Reserve Bank of Australia hacked.
Sports retailer Genesco files lawsuit against Visa.
Anonymous Italy takes down the site of far-right organization.
China accuses Coca Cola of espionage.
Gambler uses Australian casino’s security cameras to win AU$32 million (€25 million)
Irritated cybercriminals launch DDOS attacks against Brian Krebs’ website, SWAT his house.