As reported by Cyberint, LinkedIn is being targeted in a surge of account hacks, takeovers and lockouts with the inability for users to resolve the issues through LinkedIn’s support.
“While LinkedIn has not yet issued an official announcement, it appears that their support response time has lengthened, with reports of a high volume of support requests,” reports Cyberint’s researcher Coral Tayar.
Meanwhile, users have taken to various online forums such as Twitter and Reddit to air their frustrations regarding LinkedIn’s lack of response and support in recovering the breached accounts, some reporting it’s been almost a week and they haven’t received assistance yet.
As observed by Cyberint in many accounts, the attackers appear to be using leaked credentials or brute-force to attempt to gain control. For accounts that are well protected, the takeover attempts only resulted in a temporary account lock, but when the hackers successfully took over LinkedIn accounts, they quickly swapped the associated email address, changed the password, and in some instances even turned on 2FA making the account recovery process even more difficult.
In some instances, the attackers demanded a small ransom to return the accounts back to the owners and in others they simply deleted the accounts without asking for anything.
Emily Phelps, Director, Cyware had this to say:
“We live a significant part of our lives online, and we don’t want our online identities in the wrong hands. I have no doubt that LinkedIn is receiving a tremendous increase in support requests, which likely accounts for the slow response time, it is advisable to reach out to your customers and inform them of the steps you’re taking to rectify the situation.”
If you maintain a LinkedIn account, now would be a good time to review the security measures you’ve activated, enable 2FA, and switch to a unique and long password. As for LinkedIn, I can’t find any evidence that they’ve commented on this. Which doesn’t look good on them at all.
Clorox Discloses That Operations And Systems Were Taken Offline Due To ‘Unauthorized Activity’
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked on August 17, 2023 by itnerdThis week in regulatory filings with the SEC, Clorox reported a cybersecurity incident that forced it to take several systems offline and is causing disruption to parts of the business’s operations.
“To the extent possible, and in line with its business continuity plans, Clorox has implemented workarounds for certain offline operations in order to continue servicing its customers,” the company said in an 8-K filing.
Clorox noted in its 10-k report that it has seen an increase in the number of cyber attacks since shifting to a hybrid remote work model, and while they are in the process of a multi-year technology upgrade, including transitioning to a cloud-based platform,:
“The upgrade poses several challenges, including training of personnel, migration of data and the potential instability of the new system.
“[Clorox] may be vulnerable to increased risks, including the risk of security breaches, system failures and disruptions.”
Ted Miracco, CEO, Approov Mobile Security had this comment:
“Clorox and many other companies are being adversely affected by a one two punch of a shift to remote work and the concurrent reliance on personal mobile devices. This dynamic has dangerously expanded the attack surface for cyber threats, especially business email compromise, cyber extortion, phishing, and other social engineering attacks.
“Organizations must urgently prioritize protections for this new perimeter, and it is especially important to focus on remote workers whom may be using personal devices that are not as secure as company-issued devices.”
Steve Hahn, Executive VP, BullWall follows with this comment:
“As Clorox indicated in their company 10K filings, cyber attacks have escalated in the last few years due to their new “hybrid” work from home model. Like many companies, this work model expands the attack surface and makes the job of securing the endpoints nearly impossible. Broadly speaking, we’ve seen a huge uptick as a result of increased efforts by threat actors who now have vastly more attack vectors to take advantage of.
“It doesn’t seem to matter how good a company’s preventative posture is, with a determined threat actor it’s a matter of “when” not “if” the attackers are successful. Because of this companies need to adopt a post breach mentality that looks to respond and recover in milliseconds by containing the attack, and not just focusing on prevention.”
With hybrid work here to stay, companies have to think differently about how they secure themselves. And as evidenced by this case, make every effort to make sure that either the bad guys don’t get in, or they are forced out as quickly as possible.
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