Month: February 2018

A recently discovered PayPal issue allows anyone to reveal the last four digits of the payment method, the account balance and recent transactions. This vulnerability was reported to PayPal’s bug bounty program, where it was classified as being out of scope. The issue still exists as of February 25, 2018.

All the attacker needs to know is the e-mail address and phone number linked to the account. The attacker would then visit the Forgot Password page on PayPal’s web site, and enter the e-mail address of the target account. The web site would offer to confirm the credit card number linked to the account, while presenting the credit card type and the last 2 digits of the credit card number. The attacker would then call the customer service number, and try to guess via the interactive voice response system the last four digits of the credit card number. Having the last two digits already at hand, this leaves only 100 combinations to try.

Once the correct combination of the last four digits has been found, the attacker would use the interactive voice response system to retrieve the account balance and the recent transactions.

Read more about it here.

According to a report published in February 2018 by security giant McAfee, the global cost of cybercrime jumped from $500 billion in 2014 to $600 billion, representing about 0.8 of the global GDP.

The cost of cybercrime is distributed among all the countries of the world, no one country is spared.

The jump is mainly caused by increased number of online users from low income countries with weak cybersecurity, quick adoption of new technology and growing sophistication by cybercriminals, the growth of Cybercrime as a Service, and an expanding number of cybercrime centers in certain countries.

Read more about it here.

Researchers found an unprotected Amazon S3 bucket, containing personal information and scanned documents of 119,000 customers of Bongo International. The company was bought in 2014 by Fedex, was rebranded as Fedex Cross-Border International, and shut down in April 2017. The exposed documents included scanned passports, driver licenses, national ID cards, utility bills, medical indurance cards and credit cards that customers used to verify their identity with the Fedex division.

Fedex has eventually removed the S3 bucket

Read more about it here.

In September 2017, Equifax suffered a massive data breach. Cyber criminals stole personal records of 145 million residents of the US, Canada and the UK. That included names, social security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, credit score dispute forms, and for some users also the credit card numbers and driver license numbers.

A document recently submitted by Equifax to the US Senate Banking Committee reveals attackers also stole taxpayer identification numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and credit card expiry dates belonging to some Equifax customers.

Equifax noted that the additional exposed information relates to a small number of people.

Read more about it here.

The Australian government launched on January 31, 2018 an investigation into the loss of thousands of classified documents. The documents were in locked drawers and were sold with two second-hand filing cabinets.

The buyer, who hasn’t been identified, drilled the locks and found the documents. The ABC obtained some of the documents, and began publishing parts of the files this week, revealing some embarrassing facts about the Australian government.

Read more about it here.

Two men have been arrested and another remains on the run, after they were indicted on January 30, 2018 for trying to “jackpot” an ATM, so the machine would give out cash.

ATM manufacturers Diebold Nixdorf and NCR Corp. have said these attacks have occurred in the U.S., but did not detail whom they have targeted and how much money was dispensed.

ATM jackpotting, also known as “logical attacks,” simply means that cyber thieves physically install malware onto ATMs, giving them control over how much money gets dispensed at any given time.

Read more about it here.