Jaimin Pandya

“OceanLotus” targets BMW and Hyundai networks

December 10, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

APT hacker group “OceanLotus” apparently compromised network systems of automaker BMW and Hyundai by installing some hacking tool which would control and spy their systems. What they did was nothing new but it was sophisticated.

According to the article

“Created Fake Websites

To get access to other computers, the hackers created a fake website that gave the impression of belonging to the BMW branch in Thailand, as they can monitor networks and find out which folders and files that users logged in.

Hackers Observed for Months

The security team at BMW allowed hackers to stay active with an intention to know more details like, who they were, how many systems they managed to compromise, and what kind of data they were after.

Based on sources, no sensitive information was accessed by hackers during the incident and no primary computers were compromised.

BMW declined to provide additional information on the attack.

“We have implemented structures and processes that minimize the risk of unauthorized external access to our systems and allow us to quickly detect, reconstruct, and recover in the event of an incident,” BMW said in a statement.”

Source Article: https://www.cisomag.com/apt-hacker-group-targets-bmw-and-hyundai-networks/

A list of major security incidents of this decade!

December 1, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

As we get closer to the end of the year and more importantly end of this most technologically advanced decade, here is a highlight of the all the major security cyber security incidents or events of 2010s. I found this article interesting because I wasnt truly aware of some of these incidents that had taken place in the earlier parts of this decade. In last 5 years alone, we have seen some monstrous data breaches, lots of hacking, cyber espionage and what not. It has truly been quite a decade from a cyber security perspective. This is a very detailed article with an insanely long list of data breaches and hacking incidents.

Source Link: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-decade-of-hacking-the-most-notable-cyber-security-events-of-the-2010s/

What a week it has been for Disney Plus

November 20, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

There has been a lot of hype around Disney Plus since it launched. From their servers crashing to getting hacked they clearly had a very interesting week. The service got more than 20 million users in its first 24 hours which resulted in their website getting so much traffic that their servers crashed. A lot of users complained about not being able to access their accounts. Disney’s official statement said that there has been no breach but user accounts and information are popping up online for sale for as little as $3.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/19/thousands-disney-accounts-were-hacked-sold-online-little/

iOS 13 memory loss bug

November 11, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

It has been revealed that with the new release of iOS 13 there comes a small but not so small problem for people who like multi-tasking – i.e. switching between apps frequently. Let’s say you have two apps open – you switch from the first app to second app and then go back to the first one – that apps reloads and then likely stops losing whatever you were doing. Unlike Android and Microsoft, iOS was never good with the multitasking feature.

“The issue appears to be down to memory management issues, with iOS not retaining the app’s information in memory long enough when it is sent to the background. This could be a bug, or it could be a feature and Apple being overly aggressive in maximizing the amount of RAM available for apps in the foreground so as to improve performance.”

Source Link: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-13-has-a-huge-bug-that-makes-me-want-to-dump-my-iphone-and-ipad/

Hacker duo plead guilty

November 1, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

Two hackers who extorted money from Uber and LinkedIn plead guilty in a California court yesterday. Two guys (one from FL and other from Toronto) admitted that they had accessed and downloaded massive amount of confidential data from AWS using stolen creds.

One of the emails sent by them was:

“I was able to access backups upon backups, me and my team would like a huge reward for this,” the hackers said to the victim company in an email.

“Please keep in mind, we expect a big payment as this was hard work for us, we already helped a big corp which paid close to 7 digits, all went well.”

These guys were able to get their hands on more than 55 million Uber riders and drivers for which the company reportedly paid $100k in bitcoins in an attempt to cover up the breach. According to the article – “The indictment also revealed that the duo blackmailed LinkedIn in the same way in December 2016, informing the company that they had compromised databases of LinkedIn’s subsidiary Lynda.com and stole over 90,000 user records, including their credit card information.”

They have been released on a bond and will be sentenced in March 2020.

Article: https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/hackers-extorted-money.html

Some local news – Downingtown school data breach

October 25, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

A “brute-force” computer hacking. Leaked student records. A criminal investigation. References to past suicides. Suspensions. And a nationwide teen craze called Assassin. – This is what the article says. It’s a really weird and interesting case if anyone wants to read up on it. This is a local school around the area and the story has no specific background – its all over the place. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Link: https://www.inquirer.com/news/downingtown-school-district-hacking-students-assassin-game-20191025.html

Global Open Source Cybersecurity Initiative by IBM and McAfee

October 10, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

Two of the biggest companies in antivirus and tech sub domains are integrating together to provide better threat intelligence processes. One of things that article talks about is “One of the key realizations of the initiative is the time wasted on connection and integration that could be better spent creating tools to directly address pertinent security issues. With this newfound integration, the organizations hope to “develop protocols and standards which enable tools to work together and share information across vendors.

“The aim is to simplify the integration of security technologies across the threat lifecycle – from threat hunting and detection to analytics, operations, and response — so that products can work together out of the box.”

This alliance according to the article will create new sets of open source content and tools which will enable users and companies to share info and solutions.

Source Link: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mcafee-ibm-join-forces-for-global-open-source-cybersecurity-initiative/

SIM Port Attack

October 7, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

I was listening to this guy’s podcast on YouTube who I follow (I recommend following him) talk about SIM Port attack and the what’s and how’s of the entire thing. The podcast is based upon this guy who lost over $100k from this crypto account over night because his SIM card got attacked and was taken over by the attacker. I have included the 30 min podcast link as well as the original piece which lists how it happened step by step with images (check it out check it out)

YouTube Podcast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCWmpHHHXis

Article Link: https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-most-expensive-lesson-of-my-life-details-of-sim-port-hack-35de11517124

Ethical Hackers found 31 vulnerabilities for the Singapore Govt

October 3, 2019 by Jaimin Pandya Leave a Comment

A bunch of ethical hackers from a program called Government Bug Bounty found more than 30 vulnerabilities in Singapore government’s network system. The article mentions “The bug bounty program was organized by the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and Cyber Security Agency (CSA) in partnership with HackerOne, a popular bug bounty platform. HackerOne helps organizations find and fix the potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by cybercriminals. The new bug bounty program is part of the Singapore government’s ongoing commitment to protect its citizens and secure government network systems. The hacking challenge will offer a monetary reward to the hackers for discovering and reporting potential vulnerabilities.”

What I found really interesting was the following:

“The Government has paid out S$25,950 in bounties for discovering 31 vulnerabilities, in which four were considered as High Severity and the remaining 27 were considered as medium/low severity.”

Singapore government has this really cool program which collaborates with the cyber security community in order to build a secure nation. I think this is something every country should take into consideration

Source Link: https://www.cisomag.com/singapore-government-patches-31-vulnerabilities-found-by-ethical-hackers/