Welcome to Cyber Security Today. This is the Week in Review edition for the week ending Friday November 24th, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S.
In a few minutes Terry Cutler of Montreal’s Cyology Labs will be here to discuss recent news. But first a look at some of the headlines from the past seven days:
Huge hacks of third-party service suppliers again embarrassed companies. The government of Canada said almost 24 years of personal data held by two companies that help the military, the RCMP and federal employees move from job to job was recently stolen. One company oversees more than 20,000 relocations a year. Multiply that by 24 and its potentially 480,000 people.
UPDATE: Canada’s privacy commissioner says his office is investigating this incident.
Meanwhile in the U.S. a company that transcribes audio files from doctors said information on close to 9 million patients was stolen in a hack in March. Terry and I will talk about these incidents.
We’ll also discuss why Australia may have backed off a promise to make paying ransomware illegal, and we’ll talk about an incident where a Canadian man’s email was hacked and the SIM card on his smartphone was swapped by crooks.
Also in the news, a U.S. Senator demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland make public documents related to the Hemisphere phone surveillance program. It allows federal, state, local and Tribal law enforcement agencies to request searches of U.S. phone records, usually without warrants. The metadata records aren’t classified, Senator Ron Wyden argued. Search warrants are needed to get email and instant message metadata, so why not phone records?
Think the fingerprint print reader on your Windows laptop prevents other people from logging in? Not so, say researchers at BlackWing Intelligence. They were able to compromise the fingerprint database on three laptops, although it took them three months. How did they do it? Well, on two of the devices the manufacturer had turned off Microsoft’s Secure Device Connection Protocol to enable secure fingerprint readers. C’mon guys.
Crooks are just untrustworthy people. How bad? Some gang has named their ransomware after the VX-Underground group of threat researchers. The so-called vx-underground ransomware strain is really part of the Phobos ransomware family. Threat researchers are advised not to be fooled.
Fidelity National Finance, which provides title insurance and settlement services for the mortgage and real estate industries in the U.S., has been hit by a cyber incident. It may affect home purchases. An industry news service says transactions won’t be available until Sunday.
And Canada’s Security Intelligence Service warned scientists, academics and professionals they are wanted — by unnamed hostile governments who want their expertise. Be wary of offers of well-paying research placements or collaboration opportunities from suspicious international sources. If you get such an offer, call your organization’s security office, or the intelligence agency.
(The following is an edited transcript of the first of three news items we discussed. To hear the full conversation play the podcast)
