Month: October 2021

After the compromise of its servers in India, tech giant Acer was hacked again in Taiwan by the same threat actor.

In mid October, Acer revealed that its after-sales service systems in India were hit by an isolated attack. The incident was disclosed after the threat actors, Desorden, advertised the sale of more than 60 GB of data on an underground cybercrime forum. In response, Acer Taiwan took down the compromised server, and issued the following statement:

“We have recently detected an isolated attack on our local after-sales service system in India and a further attack in Taiwan. Upon detection, we immediately initiated our security protocols and conducted a full scan of our systems. We are notifying all potentially affected customers in India, while the attacked Taiwan system does not involve customer data. The incident has been reported to local law enforcement and relevant authorities, and has no material impact to our operations and business continuity.”

This is the third time this year that Acer suffers a data breach. In March, Acer was hit by REvil ransomware operators that compromised its systems and requested a record $50 million ransom. Acer had offered to pay the group $10 million, which was rejected by the hackers.

Read more about it here.

UK newspaper “The Telegraph”, one of the UK’s largest newspapers and online media outlets, has leaked 10 TB of data after failing to properly secure one of its Elasticsearch databases.

The exposed information includes internal logs, full subscriber names, email addresses, device info, URL requests, IP addresses, authentication tokens, and unique reader identifiers. It also included registrant information of Apple News subscribers, also including passwords in plaintext form.

The unsecured database was discovered by popular researcher Bob Diachenko on September 14, 2021. The newspaper was contacted and warned about the exposure immediately, but it took them two days to respond and secure the database. The database instance was indexed on specialized search engines on September 1, 2021, so the period of exposure was at least three weeks.

Experts recommend impacted visitors to reset their password, remain vigilant, and look out for unsolicited messages that could ask them to click on links or open attachments.

Read more about it here.

On September 30, 2021, American luxury department store Neiman Marcus notified 4.6 million customers of data breach that occurred in May 2020. According to the company:

“The personal information for affected customers varied and may have included names and contact information; payment card numbers and expiration dates (without CVV numbers); Neiman Marcus virtual gift card numbers (without PINs); and usernames, passwords, and security questions and answers associated with Neiman Marcus online accounts. More than 85% of affected payment and virtual gift cards are expired or invalid.”

According to the Neiman Marcus Group, no evidence has been found to suggest that the online customer accounts pf its two other brands, Bergdorf Goodman and Horchow, were affected by the breach.

In response to the security breach, Neiman Marcus is requiring all affected customers whose online account password hasn’t changed since May 2020 to change their password.

Read more about it here.