It’s time for our Weekly Cyber Security News Wrap-up. Here are the stories that caught our attention of this week (24th February-2nd March):
a) The NSW Government has released a report outlining it took an agency 49 days to shut down a hack which sent out 450 phishing emails. NSW Auditor-general Margaret Crawford made 11 recommendations for urgent consideration by the State, such as better training and reporting.
b)The ACCC’s Scamwatch service announced it receiver 1,289 Bitcoin based scam reports in 2017. It is reported Australians lost $1.3 million in losses from cryptocoin scams.
c) The Equifax incident has potentially devastating implications, more so than a few leaked episodes and emails like what we saw happen with HBO. We are dealing with 143 million stolen personal records. Equifax is one of the three major credit reporting agencies in the U.S., which means it holds some of the most sensitive consumer data, including names, birthdates, addresses, credit card numbers and social security numbers. The fact that the one place where personal information is supposed to be safe falls under an attack like this makes people question whether their information is safe anywhere at all. In light of this, Equifax has announced the company initially underestimated the number of people affected by the 2017 breach. It has been revealed that another 2.4 million US customers were affected, which brings the total number of affected individuals to 147.9 million.