cybersecurity

Gobbledegook Tweet Causes Panic An ominous tweet from the US Strategic Command—the agency responsible for looking after America’s nukes—simply said “;l;;gmlxzssaw”. Was it a message in a strange code, or maybe a glitch in the software? Had the account been hacked—and if so, what else had been hacked? Thankfully, this time, there’s no need for panic. It turns out a working-from-home manager had left his computer unattended and his young child mashed on the keyboard a few times.

Scammers Accidentally Ring Cybercrime Police

By Dave McKay in cybercrime

November 7, 2020

A Bad Case of Wrong Number A tech-support scammer making random phone calls in the hope of finding a victim to dupe accidentally rang the cybercrime squad of an Australian police force. Officers at the Financial and Cybercrime Investigation Branch (FCIB) used the opportunity—and a secure sand-boxed computer—to discover the mechanics behind the attack. “No one is safe from receiving scam robo-calls, not even the police,” the FCIB said.

Thirteen Year Old Arrested for Cybercrime

By Dave McKay in cybercrime

September 26, 2020

Unnamed 13-year Old Arrested for Cyberattacks in Indiana A 13-year-old boy was arrested and charged with hacking into an Indiana school district’s computer system. The defendant is a pupil at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, Valparaiso, the county seat of Porter County, Indiana. Police confirmed on September 18 that they had taken a boy into custody the day before, after school staff discovered he had illegally entered the Valparaiso Community School computer system.

Intel Data Breach and Poor Passwords

By Dave McKay in privacy

August 8, 2020

Intel Data Protected By Worthless Passwords Intel: “We believe an individual with access downloaded and shared this data” McKay Consulting: No shock, Sherlock. Intel has suffered a data breach of sensitive and company-confidential information related to its as yet unlreased Tiger Lake platform. This is design level data including source code, development and debugging tools, schematics, roadmaps and other similar information. A misconfigured Akamai content delivery network (CDN) server seems to have been the entry point for the hackers.

US Bans Tiktok and Wechat

By Dave McKay in privacy

August 7, 2020

US Bans TikTok and WeChat Mobile Apps It has long been known that free mobile apps make their money by selling your data to advertisers. That’s what funds most of the mobile apps in existence and, for that matter, many of the websites around the world. That’s the economics of the digital world. What is more sinister is the collection of data for surveillance, or the censoring of messages that pass through those apps.

Twitter Hack Was the Result of Social Engineering

By Dave McKay in cybersecurity

July 31, 2020

Social Engineering Attack Vector Twitter have declared that the route taken by the threat actors who pulled off this month’s Twitter hack and Bitcoin scam was social engineering. They made convincing but bogus phone calls to Twitter employees and managed to convince them to reveal their credentials. According to Twitter, the social engineering attack gave the threat actors the credentials of a limited set of employees, making it possible for the bad guys to access Twitter’s internal network and support tools.

Story Behind Bizarre Strategic Command Tweet

Scammers Accidentally Ring Cybercrime Police

Thirteen Year Old Arrested for Cybercrime

Intel Data Breach and Poor Passwords

US Bans Tiktok and Wechat

Twitter Hack Was the Result of Social Engineering

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