A Look Back at Recent Data Security Breaches
Summary
The year is 2014 and it does not look like is getting tougher day by day. Many firms have felt the impact of data breaches in the past. The tech industry seems the most vulnerable with every day bringing the world another security breach.
Take a look back at some of the largest data breaches in the last 12 months.
The Heartbleed Debacle
One of the biggest data breaches in history, the Heartbleed security flaw went undetected for almost years before being discovered in April 2014.
The exploit impacted about 17 percent of the Web's secure servers making passwords weak to theft-information, which was normally guarded by SSL/TLS encryption.
Leading corporates such as Amazon, Tumblr, Wordpress,
…show more content…
Developed Portal of Apple Hacked
In July 2013, tech titan Apple reported that its developer site, which houses tools and resources for programming Apple products, was compromised.
The developer site was offline for three days and Apple stated it was possible that paid user accounts may have been hacked.
The Snowden-NSA Battle
In June 2013, the government of United States suffered what is considered as one of the worst revelations on classified information in its history.
Former infrastructure analyst and NSA admin Edward Snowden has accessed and leaked classified information to media and public.
This unwarranted NSA hacking had a damaging impact on America's international relations, and put a spotlight on the current security problems faced by United States.
Sally Beauty Data Breach
In February 2013, leading beauty supplies retailer Sally Beauty noticed an unusual network activity.
Upon investigation, it was found that around 25,000 customer records were stolen. The siphoned records contained credit/debit card
…show more content…
Neiman Marcus Data Breach
American luxury specialty store Neiman Marcus reported that around 1.1 million credit/debit card numbers may have been stolen from July to October 2013.
It was reported that hackers infiltrated and infected payment terminals at Neiman Marcus outlets.
Since the luxury store does not use PIN pads, no PIN data was stolen, but only track data from credit/debit card's magnetic strips.
Social Media Sites Hacked
In November 2013, hackers stole usernames and encrypted passwords of about 2 million accounts across social media sites.
The websites affected include Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Gmail.
Adobe Data Breach
In October 2013, Adobe reported the loss of 3 million customer card records and an undetermined number of login data.
According to the report, around 38 million Adobe users were impact by the hack.
Along with user data, source code for Photoshop was also reportedly stolen.
Living Social Data Breach
In April 2014, daily deal site Living Social fell victim to a massive data breach that impacted more than 50 million
However, I feel users had a different vision/perspective on security mechanisms and they trusted each other during those times and did not have to worry about protecting their information (this is how exactly, one person’s ignorance becomes another’s person’s - hacker, here bliss). This book helps us to understand the vulnerabilities; its impacts and why it is important to address/ fix those holes.
The breach started through a contracting company called Fazio Mechanical Services, Inc. (FSM). FSM is a HVAC contractor “connected to Target’s systems to do electronic billing, contract submission, and project management.” (Goche & De Metz, 2014) The start of the data breach madness beg...
A huge security breach happened at Equifax which exposed sensitive data like Social Security numbers and addresses. The customers don’t even know that their data has been breached. Equifax gets its data from credit card companies, banks, retailers and lenders sometimes without you knowing. The company has found no evidence of unauthorized activity on Equifax's core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases. Equifax has created the website where
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the extent of the N.S.A breaches of American privacy and in doing so, became ostracized by the media and barred from freely reentering America, his home country.
Price and Sorrells shows that companies are taking too much advantage from the customer, the government, even though their trying, needs to start helping the people protect their privacy, and a balance between the amount of trust people should have giving out their sensitive records to which information is protected. A concern that is happening that the government and corporations is that personal information is not secured well enough. Price states how over 100 million sensitive records were hacked or lost in a year and the percent of increase in data breaches is 650 more than last year. Her description of how unreliable the government is with personal information by using logical and well researched information to put no faith and fear in the reader.
On October 3, 2013, The Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States of America discovered that there was a cyber-attack on their network during its regular monitoring of security check. The hackers made it through breaking in to the network and stole the sensitive and personal data of the customers which includes encrypted credit and debit card information, illegal access of customer ID's and also source code of other various Adobe products like Adobe Acrobat and ColdFusion, ColdFusion Builder. On the companies saying that the hackers got access to the encrypted customers passwords and debit and credit card numbers too. There is also a huge loss of data occurred during this data breach which impacted immense number of people internally and externally.[1][2][3]
Nowadays, hacking systems which get the data from payment card in retail stores is a popular issue. The use of stolen third-party vendor credentials and RAM scraping malwares were the main reasons for the data breach. A brief introduction of when and how the Home Depot’s data breach took place and how the home depot reacted to the issue and rectified it by
TJX, the largest off‐price clothing retailer in the United States. Winners and HomeSense in Canada are two from the eight organizations. TJX faced the largest online hack with about 94 million records lost in 2006. The company found in December 2006 about the breach. After the investigation, the company found that they were losing sensitive information since 2005.
Edward Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, shocked the world in June 2013 after becoming the source of one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Snowden, who copied at least 1.7 million documents from the agency and shared up to 200,000 of them with reporters, revealed to the world operational details about the NSA and its surveillance programs of US citizens and targets abroad (Toxen). In order to escape punishment in America, Snowden fled to Hong Kong, and eventually to Moscow, Russia where he currently resides. Ever since this classified information was leaked, there has been growing controversy over the legality and ethicality of these programs, and questions
Introduction The credit-reporting bureau Equifax disclosed one the largest data breach in modern history, reporting that private information and social security numbers 143 million consumers. Initially the breach happened in May through July and was not discovered until July 29, no evidence of unauthorized access to databases (John). Analyzing key issues what went wrong with the leader, what went wrong on the end of the security part of the I.T. department, and highlighting some ways the consumers can be proactive in protecting their private information. Highlights of the Issues
Personal data is quickly becoming a commodity in today's high technology world. This information is used by banks, investment and brokerage companies, credit card merchants, government agencies (local, state and federal), and consumer product-based companies. Most people probably don't realize the amount of information that's shared between companies, or how often it's done. Many companies sell and share customer data to help sell products and find out what new products they should produce. Other uses include gathering information about inventory levels to help better determine what types of products are bought at which store, when and how often. This can be used for inventory and production, to make sure that the store (or stores for chains, like Safeway and Long's Drugs) can have the products available when they're needed.
The Serious Societal Concern of Data Breaching: Which Current laws address this issue and and Areas of Improvement and Concern Summary of Event and Data Breaching Amongst almost millions of others, I was one of the T-Mobile customers whose account had customer data stolen from it in 2014. My personal data including my birthday, home address, driver license number, and full name was amongst important information stolen. I was at that time, grateful that at least my credit card information was not retrieved by these hackers. What occurred was that T-Mobile, a mobile service provider, sends its customer’s data to Experian, who is responsible for checking each customer’s credit score, using this personal data to check if that client is a good
Altogether, it seems that hackers concerned with Sony’s rampant data collection methods decided to take action and broke into the servers. They were able to break in so easily due to the existence of a preexisting hole in the security of the server. The hackers compromised of the personally identifiable information of 77 million user accounts. This included information such as addresses, usernames, passwords, purchase history, security question answers, and credit card details (Stuart and Arthur 2011).
About The Mysterious Hack of Sony Pictures Sony Pictures is recovering from a massive hack, which pushed the company to turn off its computer system previous Monday. Now everybody, from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to Sony to the international media, is attempting to find out who is behind the attack. Following ideas that North Korea was included in the hack as part of revenge for a forthcoming (fictional) movie about two American journalists who try to assassinate Kim Jong-un, Re/code revealed Wednesday night that Sony pictures was set to confirm that accusation. Reports of the Sony Pictures first hack appeared on Reddit when a past sony employee shared a picture taken by a present Sony worker.
Lynn said that “ over the past few years, all manner of data has been stolen, some of it mundane, some of it concerning our most sensitive systems, including aircraft avionics, surveillance technologies, satellite communications, and network security protocols.” He also acknowledged that the Defense Department lost 24,000 files in cyber attacks by foreign intruders in March 2011.... ... middle of paper ... ...