Cumbria, Norfolk and Suffolk Police all reveal data breaches
Following the recent data breach at the Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) which exposed officer details, Cumbria Police, along with Norfolk and Suffolk Police, have also reported breaches. Earlier this year, Cumbria Police mistakenly released the names and salaries of its personnel online. Though the information was promptly removed, the duration it remained online is uncertain.
Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies jointly disclosed an issue concerning a fraction of their responses to Freedom of Information Requests for crime statistics between April 2021 and March 2022. A glitch resulted in undisclosed raw data being embedded in files, which, though hidden, should not have been present. This data covered crime reports including details of victims, witnesses, and suspects, and a spectrum of offences.
After reviewing the incidents, both constabularies are informing 1,230 affected individuals about the breach. Eamonn Bridger, the assistant chief constable of Suffolk Police, expressed regret and assured the public of their continuous review of data handling procedures. While they believe the data hasn't been accessed externally, the UK's data watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, has been informed.
IBM caught up in MOVEit hack with 4 million people impacted
IBM inadvertently played a role in a potential data breach of US medical patients data involving the Clop ransomware gang.
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) sounded the alarm to over 4 million individuals, predominantly those enrolled in low-income health schemes.
While HCPF manages Colorado's Medicaid and other health initiatives, it wasn't directly involved in using the compromised software, MOVEit by Progress Software. However, IBM did. The cyber attackers exploited IBM's installation of this tool to potentially access the sensitive information held by HCPF.
An official statement from the department assured that no direct breaches occurred in the HCPF or any associated Colorado systems.
Still, the assurances might provide limited comfort to the 4,091,794 Health First Colorado and Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) members. Their personal details, including names, National Insurance numbers, health records, and insurance data, could now be at risk.
Since the MOVEit hack was first reported 685 organisations and between 42- 46 million people have been impacted.
Bangladesh Central Bank suspends internal services to prevent cyber attack
Bangladesh's central bank temporarily halted several of its online services to avert potential cyber threats. The Bangladesh Bank (BB) paused specific web services for 36 hours as a precautionary move, recalling the 2016 incident when hackers pilfered close to $1 billion, as stated in a bank notice.
BB's Executive Director, Md. Mezbaul Haque, told news outlets that since Sunday, heightened surveillance was in place to deter cyber threats. He emphasized that this shutdown affects only certain internal systems, ensuring public services remain unaffected.
This decision came in response to an Aug. 4 warning from the nation's electronic incident team, alerting about a potential cyber onslaught on key information infrastructures, banks, governmental agencies, and private entities.
In 2016, hackers targeted the Bangladeshi central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, managing to extract close to a billion-dollars, marking it as one of the largest cyber thefts in history.
Following the cyber warning, BB disseminated an 11-point directive, urging all banking and financial entities to stay vigilant. This advisory emerged after 'hacktivists' from India purportedly threatened institutions in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Advisory issued over Citrix NetScaler vulnerability
Almost 2,000 Citrix NetScaler systems have been breached using a backdoor, capitalising on a recently revealed critical security flaw.
The aggressors are believed to have systematically exploited the CVE-2023-3519 vulnerability, inserting web shells into susceptible NetScalers to maintain prolonged access. The vulnerability allows adversaries to run any command through this web shell, even if the NetScaler has been patched or restarted.
CVE-2023-3519 is a critical code injection flaw affecting NetScaler ADC and Gateway servers, permitting unauthorised remote code execution. Citrix addressed this issue last month. So far, 2,491 web shells have been detected on 1,952 distinct NetScaler devices. The bulk of these compromised systems are in European countries including Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, and Austria. Interestingly, though Canada, Russia, and the U.S. had numerous vulnerable servers, none of them showed any signs of these web shells.
The current breach campaign is believed to have affected around 6.3% of the 31,127 NetScaler systems that were exposed to CVE-2023-3519 as of July 21, 2023.
The incident underscores the paramount importance of timely patching and updating systems to thwart potential cyber threats.
