We bring to your attention a sampling of recent media stories involving cyber risk & privacy liability. Among the stories we’re highlighting this month: US Fertility Sued Over Ransomware Attack, UPMC Data Breach, Hacker Tried to Poison Florida City’s Water Supply, and more.

Cryptocurrency/ Blockchain

Hacker Steals $2.8 Million from Cryptocurrency ‘Vault’ Despite ‘Unhackable’ Blockchain Security

On Thursday evening, an unknown entity stole $2.8 million from a shared digital “vault” on the investment website Yearn.finance. The culprit exploited the vault using Aave, an open-source cryptocurrency platform that allows people to make “flash loans,” a rapid borrowing and repaying of money without the need for collateral. Click to read entire article

Ransomware

US Fertility Sued Over Ransomware Attack, Health Data Exfiltration

US Fertility, a third-party support services vendor, has been sued by the patients impacted by a ransomware attack that resulted in the exfiltration of health data in September. Click to read entire article.

Restoration of computer system continues after ransomware found

Georgetown County is still working to restore its computer system after its network was breached by ransomware last month. The county will need to draw on its cash reserves to upgrade the system and improve security . . Click to read entire article.

Victor Central Schools to Remain Closed Tuesday Due to Ransomware Attack

VICTOR, N.Y. — ​The Victor Central School District will remain closed Tuesday because of a ransomware attack that encrypted and knocked out access to its servers. Click to read entire article.

Healthcare

UPMC Data Breach

UPMC is reporting a massive data breach that likely affected more than 36,000 patients, according to a press release. Officials say the data breach was reported to them by Charles J. Hilton & Associates, who provides billing-related legal services to the health system, whose email system was reportedly hacked. Click to read entire article.

Nevada Health Centers reports data breach

Personal information of patients at Nevada Health Centers “potentially” was accessed during a data breach last fall, the organization announced Friday. An unknown person logged into an employee’s email account and “potentially accessed” patient names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, gender, ethnicity and race, insurance and appointment information, medical record number, provider names and locations of service for an unknown number of patients. Click to read entire article.

Florida Healthy Kids blames health insurance data breach on third-party hack

The Florida Healthy Kids Corporation (FHKC), a US provider of children’s health insurance, has traced a data breach affecting thousands of individuals to a cyber-attack on its web hosting platform. Click to read entire article.

Automotive

Over Three Million US Drivers Exposed in Data Breach

Over three million customers of a US car company have had their details compromised after a cyber-criminal posted them to a dark web forum, according to Risk Based Security. Click to read entire article.

Data Leak Hits Nissan North America

Misconfigured Git server exposes automaker’s internal code online.

Unfortunately, Nissan North America recently suffered a data leak when source code for its mobile apps and internal tools surfaced online after the company presumably misconfigured one of its Git servers. Click to read entire article.

Telecom

Hackers Accessed UScellular Customer Data and Ported Numbers After Breaching Company’s CRM Software

UScellular filed a data breach notification with the Vermont Attorney General’s office after hackers breached the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) software and accessed customer data. The breach occurred after scammers tricked company employees into downloading software, a remote access tool that allowed an attacker to access the computer remotely. Click to read entire article.

IT

SitePoint discloses data breach after stolen info used in attacks

The SitePoint web professional community has disclosed a data breach after their user database was sold and eventually leaked for free on a hacker forum. At the end of December 2020, BleepingComputer learned of a data breach broker selling the user databases for 26 different companies. One of the databases was for SitePoint.com, which the broker stated contained one million user records. Click to read entire article.

Solarwinds

Solarwinds CEO Says No Office 365 Vulnerability Pinpointed as Entry Point

SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna has verified suspicious activity in his Office 365 environment, compromised by a company email account and used to access the accounts of targeted SolarWinds staff in business and technical roles. Click to read entire article.

Public Entities

Hacker Tried to Poison Florida City’s Water Supply, Police Say

The hacker tried to drastically increase sodium hydroxide levels in the water, Pinellas County, Florida, officials said on Monday. Click to read entire article.

Vt. data breach damage control to cost upwards of $7M

MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – State leaders for the fifth day in a row continued to grapple with the scope of a technical error at the Vermont Department of Labor that compromised the identities of thousands of Vermonters. The snafu, first announced Monday, involves upward of 44,000 1099-G tax forms issued by the Vermont Department of Labor that mixed up personal information of claimants. Click to read entire article.

Lawsuit Filed Against California Firm Over Washington State Auditor Data Breach

The legal claims are flying over the massive unemployment-data breach involving Washington State Auditor Pat McCarthy’s office. Click to read entire article.

County ‘pretty close’ to recovering from attack

At 7:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Chatham County government released an email statement saying it had identified a cyber incident that left its network, office phones and email “inoperable for an undetermined amount of time.” Click to read entire article.

Rotterdam alerts residents of data breach

ROTTERDAM, NY (WRGB) — The town of Rotterdam is reporting a data breach Monday night they say left residents at risk of having their personal, private information solicited. Click to read entire article.

K-12

Winthrop under cyberattack: Officials say hackers are blasting town Internet provider, disrupting remote education

Winthrop School Superintendent Lisa Howard says state and federal investigators have joined local police in looking at who might be attacking Winthrop’s Internet provider and making it difficult for students to participate in remote learning in recent days. Click to read entire article.

Business Interruption / DDoS

Plex Media servers are being abused for DDoS attacks

Cyber-security firm Netscout warns of new DDoS attack vector. DDoS-for-hire services have found a way to abuse Plex Media servers to bounce junk traffic and amplify distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, security firm Netscout said in an alert on Wednesday. Click to read entire article.

Canada

Canadian commercial real estate services firm acknowledges cyberattack

A Toronto-based commercial real estate services and investment management firm has acknowledged it was the victim of a cyberattack in November but isn’t saying if the incident was ransomware as a gang is claiming. Click to read entire article.

EU/UK

Pandemic Sees Surge In Healthcare Ransomware Attacks

Cyber-attacks on healthcare organisations skyrocketed in 2020, with the surge showing no signs of abatement, as opportunistic criminals looked for ways to exploit the Covid-19 crisis, researchers said. Click to read entire article.

UK Research and Innovation suffers ransomware attack

The agency has suspended some services while an investigation takes place. Click to read entire article.

Asia pacific

How a 2020 Cyber Attack Brought the New Zealand Stock Exchange to Its Knees

The website of the New Zealand Stock Exchange slowed to a crawl on a Tuesday afternoon in August. It was so badly throttled that the exchange couldn’t post market announcements, as required by financial regulators. So with an hour left for trading, management shut the entire operation down. Click to read entire article.

Hackers leak phone data of Army personnel in J&K

A hacker group has allegedly leaked data of Army personnel using the Bharti Airtel network in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the company has denied any breach in its system. Click to read entire article.

Singapore: Enhanced Personal Data Protection Act Takes Effect

The new PDPA introduces mandatory breach notification, criminal penalties for mishandled data, and a higher cap on penalties for breaches by large organisations. Click to read entire article