In the past, our world has encountered some of the massive and worrisome cyber breaches regarding the information security side of the businesses. The cyberattacks occurring these days are nowhere near the ones we encountered 10-12 years before. The latest cyber-attacks are more diligent, motive based, and critical in the ramifications they bring up for their targets. All the attacks that are mentioned here shortly are the result of a lack of interest in upgrading the current security detailing but most promptly of not being able to contain the breach from the beginning.
We will be discussing the number of attacks that occurred and how these should have been tackled to minimize the number of causalities in the long run. Without further ado let’s get right into it;
1. Baltimore
In early May, a group of extreme hackers took on the most worrisome and critical method of hacking to recover from; the use of ransomware. In the execution of the attack, multiple government systems were infected with the ransomware, which encrypted and transferred all the important information and user data to secure server locations only accessible by the hackers. The information that was stolen included the voicemails, emails as well as the payment system for the water bills and other parking fine information of the citizens.
Mayor of Baltimore was filled in with the consequences of the attack if he refused to give in to the ransom demands made by hackers. It would take an easy array of weeks to months to recover from the attack. He wasn't ready to give away the ransom money in the form of the bitcoins, and thus, all the information stolen by hackers remain inaccessible. Hackers only agreed to give away the control of the systems back only after their demands were met, which in this case never happened.
Later on, it was found that an IT manager warned the city officials about the current cybersecurity conditions of the city. She vividly advised to update the current security tactics to the latest standards, hire more data security experts to cover maximum fronts, and to allow a decent amount of funds in this stead. But her advised fell on deaf ears, and the rest is history. Had her voice be heard sooner than later, the city wouldn't have to go through such a massive cyber trial, which it eventually lost.
2. Marriot
Marriot looms carry a worldwide reputation and yet the company sustained a massive cyber breach in late 2018. The hack wasn't evident only until it was found that almost half a billion guests of Marriot Inc. were compromised worldwide. Not only their personal information was stolen/hacked, but the detailed capacity of the attack also entailed the theft of emails, phone numbers, personal addresses, date of birth, passport information, and even more sensitive data was compromised.
The main reason for this attack isn’t the fact that the maintenance body was too ignorant of updating their standard cybersecurity, but due to an acquisition, they made in 2014. Early that year the Marriot Inc. purchased the Starwood chain of hotels and brought them with themselves an infected website used by the Starwood hotels, which were also a burning sensation or topic of interest among the hackers on the dark web.
Marriot Inc. failed to scan the acquired business for any potential leaks regarding user information or other cyber breaches. As it happens, the Starwood hotels sustained a massive credit card hack in 2014, and the hole in their website remained up until the signing of its acquisition to the Marriot Inc. this calls for the need of a cybersecurity expert not only in the network infrastructure but also for the other aspects of the business. They could have diverted this course of drastic cyber attacking if a cybersecurity official speculated the red flags. This way, important security implementations, and threat scanning could have been done over the acquired side of the business.
3. Uber
Uber came around a massive data breach in 2016, the data of almost 57 million customers and the drivers were compromised. Uber, however, did agree to pay a ransom of $100,000 to the hackers to give the data back, and for not taking it to the public, hackers, however, didn't hold their end of the deal and the complete record went public.
The problem initiated not in the personal data network of Uber but in the third-party cloud systems, which they rented for data storage, implementation, and testing of their technology implementations. Only after the breach could they find about those security loopholes.
The CEO of Uber at the time was kept in the dark about the hack for about a whole month, and other Uber officials again paid the hackers to delete the data once and for all. This wasn't a security shortcoming but rather an imperative lack of having a cyber incidence team to deal with the breach the moment it surfaced. Later on, Uber was forced to pay a sum of $148 million to the legal state authorities for not reporting the cyber breach for a whole year. Had they have a cyber incidence response team, the whole scenario could be shifted otherwise.
4. Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster is one of the most interacted ticket booking platforms both in the USA and in Europe. They encountered a fatal cybersecurity breach in their mainframe, and the personal data of a lot of customers were taken. European Union at that time had announced the general data protection rule, which stated that companies would have to declare the nature and type of the data they are collecting along with the reporting of any data breach within 72 hours. Given the fact that the company encountered a data breach, they reported it on time, but still to no avail.
According to the Ticketmaster, the vulnerability resided in their extended data network controlled by artificial intelligence provider Inbenta. Inbenta, on the other hand, held Ticketmaster responsible for the breach, according to them an unknown JavaScript code was entered the mainframe network without Inbenta's knowledge. Had Ticketmaster infused the code in collaboration with the Inbenta so that it could be done professionally with an extra layer of firewalls installed to guard the code, the breach would never have happened. That is why it is important to incorporate all elements of the extended network within the cybersecurity policy to avoid such extremities in the future.