Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia said it was experiencing “intermittent outages” when it appeared to have been the target of a cyber-attack in early September. The site was down over the course of one evening and early morning, affecting 94% of all users in Russia, America and the Middle East. A later statement on the Wikimedia German Twitter account claimed that the platform had been the victim of a “very broad DDoS attack”.
The UK, US and India are among the top countries facing the increasing threat of nation-sponsored attacks, new data reveals. According to a Thomson Reuters Labs blog, 22 countries are suspected to have sponsored cyber operations with financial backing from the state. Notable historic cases include the 2017 attack on Solarworld, an owner of cutting-edge IP and global contracts in the steel industry. The attacks were attributed to China. Vitaly Kamluk of Kaspersky Labs warned the attacks are a “growing concern”.
Chinese multinational technology company Huawei has been suspended from a membership to an exclusive forum designed to tackle security breaches. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, otherwise known as FIRST, confirmed that the company will not be involved. Executive Director Chris Gibson said: “After extensive consultation and review, we regret ending up in a position where we had to suspend Huawei’s membership in order to ensure we meet these evolving regulations, and we intend to work closely with both Huawei and the Bureau of Industry and Security to address any concerns related to their participation in FIRST.”
A Google Trends data study from 2004 to 2019 has revealed the top search terms for those interested in cybersecurity. Among the finds were the top names of those in the cybersecurity business, as well as companies which were most likely to be used in phishing attacks. Apple ranked as number one for the most often used company name in scam emails, along with PayPal, HMRC, Amazon and Natwest. Equifax has the poorest reputation based on search results, thanks to a data breach in 2017 which led to 150 million people’s data being exposed.
A data breach affecting 20 million people – 3 million more than the population of Ecuador – is said to potentially expose every Ecuadorian citizen’s data. Among the victims are the Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The exposed data has been sourced to government registries, as well as a national bank and automotive association. It includes taxpayer identification numbers, driving records and back account records.
September 2019 will see the launch of a new ecommerce authentication law as set out by the EU. Strong customer authentication, otherwise known as PSD2, will require all customers buying and banking online to use two-factor authentication to identify themselves, for example password and fingerprint. Enterprises around the EU are now trying to identify the banks that recognise the new law so that they can transition effectively without fines.
