As nearly every company has transitioned the day to day operations of their business to working from home amid COVID-19, we have witnessed a major increase in the number of data breaches. According to Security Boulevard, these kinds of cases have already been reported in 81 global companies from 81 countries. Furthermore, data analysis from cybersecurity research professionals has revealed the impact on the data breach landscape due to COVID-19 where 80% of data breaches have occurred either because of stolen credentials or brute-force attacks.
In the first six months of 2020, various Fortune 500 companies became the target of massive data breaches where hackers sold account credentials, sensitive data, confidential and financial information of these organizations cybercriminal forums.
At the present moment, cybercriminals are exploiting the situation of the pandemic to launch carefully maneuvered cyber attacks on a variety of industries. So much so that there have, in fact, been 16 billion records exposed this year. Moreover, according to researchers, 8.4 billion records have been exposed in the Q1 of 2020 alone! This number is a 273% increase in comparison with the first half of 2019 during which 4.1 billion records were exposed, as mentioned in Security Boulevard.
Below, we’ll discuss five of the biggest data breaches of the year so far in detail:
1. Twitter Hack
This year, Twitter was the victim of one of a major breach in data involving the accounts of many A-list celebrities such as former President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Kanye West. Hackers were able to verify and gain access to an abundance of accounts, and even reset the login information of 45 of these accounts. Additionally, the hackers “posted fake tweets from these accounts, offering to send $2000 for $1000 sent to an unknown Bitcoin address. Reportedly, the Twitter breach well-coordinated scam made attackers swindle $121,000 in Bitcoin through nearly 300 transactions.” As far as the logistics behind this cybersecurity attack, Twitter has stated that the attack, which occurred on July 15th, targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear-phishing attack. This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems.
2. Marriott Data Breach
In late March, hotel giant Marriott announced a massive security breach affecting the data of over 5 million hotel guests. The cybercriminals were able to gain access to key login information for Marriott employees--reportedly either by credential stuffing or phishing--who had customer information regarding the loyalty scheme of the hotel chain. These hackers then used the information to acquire personal information and private data of many hotel guests prior to the discovery of the breach. The data accessed in the breach involved personal details such as names, birthdates, and telephone numbers, travel information, and loyalty program information. Marriot also experienced a similar data breach two years ago, in which 500 million of the hotel’s guests were impacted.
3. MGM Data Dump
MGM Resorts suffered a massive data breach this past year. The news of this breach became public in February when the personal details of 10.6 million hotel guests were leaked and free to download. But in the later findings, the number increased by 14 times (nearly 142 million) than the number recorded in February 2020. The specific personal information released by the hacker included first and last names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and even data of birth. Some of the “leaked files of guests included Justin Bieber, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and many major government agency officials. However, a spokesperson from MGM Resorts confirmed that impacted guests were notified about the data breach. In addition, it said, ‘We are confident that no financial, payment card or password data was involved in this matter’.
4. Zoom Credentials Up for Sale!
As a result of the recently adopted method of working from home and the current landscape of remote working for countless companies, Zoom has become a very significant tool for carrying out these processes. The video conferencing apps, which is also used for remote learning on college campuses, high schools, charter schools, and for other virtual educational purposes, has become increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, this means the platform has also become popular among hackers and cybercriminals seeking to acquire data and personal information through phishing attacks or scams. Within a relatively short period of time, the Zoom platform revealed to have a few vulnerabilities as it pertains to cybersecurity threats and even suffered an official data breach. Early April saw news of 500,000 stolen Zoom passwords available for sale in dark web crime forums across the entire Zoom application. The aftermath of this data breach reportedly led to over half a million login credentials of Zoom users being up for sale. In addition to these login credentials, other account information such as personal meeting URLs and HostKeys were available too. The leaked accounts’ details belonged to financial institutions, banks, colleges, and various organizations.
5. Magellan Health
This past April, healthcare giant Magellan Health fell victim to both a major data breach and ransomware attack. The Fortune 500 company has publicly confirmed that an estimated 365,000 patients were affected in the sophisticated cyberattack. According to the investigation, the attack was launched with a fully planned process where hackers first installed malware to steal employee login credentials. Then they leveraged a phishing scheme to gain access to systems of Magellan after sending out a phishing email and impersonating as their client before deploying a ransomware attack. This incident, in particular, exemplifies the true dangers of phishing and well-disguised phishing attacks such as emails. After stealing the data, the hackers were able to obtain the login credentials of employees, personal information, employee ID numbers, sensitive patient details such as W-2 information, Social Security numbers, or Taxpayer ID numbers.
The transition to remote work has allowed hackers and cybercriminals to develop highly advanced attacks--along with ransomware, phishing, DDoS, BEC attacks, etc --to acquire data and personal information from major corporations and consumers alike. However, by using what we have learned from these recent data breaches, we can take the necessary precautions to improve the security of our organizations from these emerging cybersecurity threats. Some of the most important security measures for your organization to follow during the new landscape of remote working include educating your employees with security awareness training to help them in recognizing and combating emerging cyber threats, incorporating phishing incident response tool[s] to instantly report suspicious-looking and unsolicited emails, and securing your email domains against email spoofing attacks by implementing email authentication protocols such as DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
2020 has clearly seen a major increase in data breaches of even the most significant and well-known global corporations, epitomizing the necessity and importance of cybersecurity in the new landscape of remote working.
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