The much-anticipated Overwatch 2 launch was disrupted by a series of DDoS attacks that rendered the game unplayable for a time and forced the developer to push a “Unexpected server error occurred” message to users. In other cybersecurity news, four UK firms faced heavy fines for unsolicited phone calls.
Russian retail chain breached
Officials for DNS, one of the largest retailers in Russia, confirmed that the company fell victim to a data breach by a hacker group known as ‘NLB Team.’ The announcement happened several hours after the stolen data was posted to a dark web sales forum. The posted data is believed to have been stolen during a cyberattack from September 19 and includes an immense amount of identifying information on employees and customers. Upwards of 16 million individuals may have been affected by this breach, though the actual quantity of data is still unknown.
RansomEXX takes credit for leaked Ferrari documents
While staff at Ferrari have been unable to identify any unauthorized activity within their systems, they have confirmed that illicitly posted documents claiming to originate from Ferrari are legitimate. The group taking responsibility for leaking the documents is RansomEXX, who claims to have nearly 7GB of stolen data. It is possible that the data was sourced from a previous data breach of a third-party company that continually works with car manufacturers on supply chain issues.
Four UK firms face fines over illegal marketing calls
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued fines to four companies who have been identified as using predatory marketing calls to harass potential customers, with more than 820,000 calls to people who were registered in the country’s Telephone Preference System to opt out of soliciting campaigns. Each of the four companies were fined proportionally to the number of calls they made, up to £150,000 for a window company that made over 460,000 unsolicited calls.
Data breach rocks City of Tucson, Arizona
Following a multi-week investigation, officials for the City of Tucson, Arizona have confirmed a data breach that has compromised the personally identifiable information (PII) for nearly 125,000 citizens. The investigation found that the city’s systems had been breached for a two-week period in May and had been used to exfiltrate everything from Social Security numbers to passports and driver’s licenses. Though there has been no sign of the stolen data being misused or sold, the City of Tucson is offering credit and identity monitoring for all those affected by the breach.
DDoS attacks overwhelm Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 launch
While many video games launches come with their own challenges, from long queues to server stability, the recent launch for Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 came with the challenge of fending off a series of DDoS attacks. The launch started with thousands of users complaining over connectivity issues, but they were eventually met with a message stating “Unexpected server error occurred” and no option to continue past the title screen. Officials for Blizzard continued to deal with the aftermath of the attacks into the following day, leaving thousands of excited fans disappointed.
