The IT Nerd

Another day, another data breach. This time The Register has news on a data breach that affects….. wait for it…. At least 617 million accounts:

Some 617 million online account details stolen from 16 hacked websites are on sale from today on the dark web, according to the data trove’s seller.

For less than $20,000 in Bitcoin, it is claimed, the following pilfered account databases can be purchased from the Dream Market cyber-souk, located in the Tor network:

Dubsmash (162 million), MyFitnessPal (151 million), MyHeritage (92 million), ShareThis (41 million), HauteLook (28 million), Animoto (25 million), EyeEm (22 million), 8fit (20 million), Whitepages (18 million), Fotolog (16 million), 500px (15 million), Armor Games (11 million), BookMate (8 million), CoffeeMeetsBagel (6 million), Artsy (1 million), and DataCamp (700,000).

It’s been confirmed that the data breach is real and affected sites are alerting their users and taking measures to try and protect their users. And the fact that the data is up for sale means that the effects will go on for months and years. Still, it’s not as big as the data breach that involved 2.2 billion accounts that came to light earlier this year. But it is still scary.

As for how you can protect yourself, you can visit Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned service to see if you are affected by this breach.

Hackers have breached the severs of email provider VFEmail.net and wiped the data from all its US servers, destroying all US customers’ data in the process:

The attack took place yesterday, February 11, and was detected after the company’s site and webmail client went down without notice. “At this time, the attacker has formatted all the disks on every server,” the company said yesterday. “Every VM is lost. Every file server is lost, every backup server is lost. This was more than a multi-password via SSH exploit, and there was no ransom. Just attack and destroy,” VFEmail said. The company’s staff is now working to recover user emails, but as things stand right now, all data for US customers appears to have been deleted for good and gone into /dev/null.

/dev/null is a UNIX/LINUX term for a deletion point with little to no hope of recovery. Think of a trash can that burns anything put into it. Which means that any customer who hosted email on this platform is likely screwed. I have to admit that I was blown away by the scale of this attack, and the fact that it was an attack in the purest sense. I can’t recall seeing anything like this before. I have to wonder if this is the start of a trend.

Another thing that popped to mind. Why did this happen in the first place? Why was this firm a target for this attack? I guess we’ll never know that.

A collection of almost 773 million unique email addresses and just under 22 million unique passwords were exposed on cloud service MEGA. Security researcher Troy Hunt said the collection of data, dubbed Collection #1, totaled over 12,000 separate files and more than 87GB of data. Here’s what Troy Hunt had to say:

What I can say is that my own personal data is in there and it’s accurate; right email address and a password I used many years ago,” Hunt wrote. “In short, if you’re in this breach, one or more passwords you’ve previously used are floating around for others to see.” Some passwords, including his own, have been “dehashed”, that is converted back to plain text. Hunt said he gained the information after multiple people reached out to him with concerns over the data on MEGA, with the Collection #1 dump also being discussed on a hacking forum. “The post on the forum referenced ‘a collection of 2000+ dehashed databases and Combos stored by topic’ and provided a directory listing of 2,890 of the files,” Hunt wrote. The collection has since been removed.

You can visit Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned service to see if you are affected by this breach. I strongly suggest that you that right now.

The news is breaking that hotel chain Marriott has been pwned by hackers. Specifically what has been pwned is the Starwood reservation database which they got when the bought a bunch of hotels in India and Germany a couple of years ago. Now this is a hack that affects me personally as I’ve stayed in Marriott properties over the last two years which makes me one of the 500 million people who have been affected. What’s really scary about this is that hackers have had access since 2014 but the hotel chain only figured that out last week.

All together now: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Here are more specifics:

For 327 million people, Marriott says the guests’ exposed information includes their names, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, date of birth and arrival and departure information. For millions others, their credit card numbers and card expiration dates were potentially compromised.

Marriott warns that it can’t confirm if the hackers were able to decrypt the credit card numbers.

A website has been set up and affected guests will be contacted. But this is really bad and those affected by this like yours truly should take action ASAP to protect themselves.

UPDATE: One of those affected by this hack was well known hacker Kevin Mitnick who said this:

He’s right. Companies need to seriously step up their game in order to stop stuff like this from happening. Marriott needs to slapped silly by the relevant authorities in order to send a message that this isn’t acceptable.

This isn’t a good day to be British Airways as earlier today the airline said credit card information of at least 380,000 customers have been “compromised” in a data breach that occurred between August 21 and September 5. The information stolen includes customer names, email addresses, home addresses and payment card information. But not travel or passport details:

In an email to affected customers, BA said: “We’re deeply sorry, but you may have been affected. We recommend that you contact your bank or credit card provider and follow their recommended advice. We take the protection of your personal information very seriously. Please accept our deepest apologies for the worry and inconvenience that this criminal activity has caused.” The breach has been “resolved” and the website is “working normally,” it said. In a statement, the airline added: “We have notified the police and relevant authorities… [and] will continue to keep our customers updated with the very latest information. We will be contacting customers and will manage any claims on an individual basis.”

Seeing as this is an European based airline, they had to notify the public quickly as they are covered by GDPR. But you have to wonder if British Airways will face any punishment for getting pwned by hackers? If not, this will simply keep happening. Nor will the airline have any incentive make sure that this doesn’t happen again, other than to close whatever holes led to this.