Category: Cyber Security
27. January 2020
The German car rental company Buchbinder is responsible for leaking Personal Data of more than 3 Million customers from all over Europe. The data leak exposed more than 10 Terabyte of sensitive customer data over several weeks without the company noticing it.
A German cybersecurity firm was executing routine network scans when it found the data leak. The firm reported it twice to Buchbinder via e-mail, but did not receive a reply. After that, the cybersecurity firm reported the leak to the Bavarian Data Protection Authority (DPA) and informed the German computer magazine c’t and newspaper DIE ZEIT.
According to c’t, a configuration error of a Backup-Server was the cause of the leak. The Personal Data exposed included customers’ names, private addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers, rental data, bank details, accident reports, legal documents, as well as Buchbinder employees’ e-mails and access data to internal networks.
The data leak is particularly serious because of the vast amount of leaked Personal Data that could easily be abused through Spam e-mails, Fraud, Phishing, or Identity theft. It is therefore likely that the German DPA will impose a GDPR fine on the company in the future.
Buchbinder released a press statement apologising for the data leak and promising to enhance the level of their defense and cybersecurity system.
23. January 2020
Washington lawmakers introduced in January 2020, a law that would give state residents new privacy rights. The law is called “Washington Privacy Act” (WPA).
If passed, the Privacy Act would enact a comprehensive data protection framework for Washington that includes individual rights that are very similar and go beyond the rights in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as a range of other obligations on businesses that do not yet exist in any U.S. privacy law.
Furthermore, the new draft bill contains strong provisions that largely align with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and commercial facial recognition provisions that start with a legal default of affirmative consent. Nonetheless, legislators must work within a remarkably short time-frame to pass a law that can be embraced by both House and Senate within the next six weeks of Washington’s legislative session. If passed, the bill would go into effect on July 31, 2021.
The current draft provides data protection to all Washington State residents, and would apply to entities that conduct business in Washington or produce products or services targeted to Washington residents. Such entities must control or process data of at least 100,000 consumers; or derive 50% of gross revenue from the sale of personal data and process or control personal data of at least 25,000 consumers (with “consumers” defined as natural persons who are Washington residents, acting in an individual or household context). The draft bill will not apply to state and local governments or municipal corporations. The new bill would further provide all state residents, among other rights, the ability to opt out of targeted advertising.
The new draft bill will regulate companies that process “personal data,” defined broadly as “any information that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable natural person” (not including de-identified data or publicly available information “information that is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records”), with specific provisions for pseudonymous data.
17. January 2020
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) sees a significant risk for the security of personal data when accessing local WiFi networks and the mobile network in China. A request from the German newspaper “Handelsblatt” to the BfV revealed that the Officials warn travellers to China of an increasing risk of espionage.
For the stay in China, the BfV discourages travellers from using laptops and smartphones that contain personal data, especially contact information. Instead, the BfV recommends to acquire a travel laptop and a prepaid mobile phone that could be resetted or even be disposed of after leaving China.
According to Handelsblatt, the warning stems from cases in which the Chinese border police conducted mobile phone controls at the Chinese border of Xinjiang and installed a surveillance App on tourists’ smartphones.
In 2016, the BfV already cautioned of potential espionage by Chinese secret services targetting students and researchers.
10. January 2020
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – UK’s Data Protection Authority – has fined the national retailer ‘DSG Retail Limited’ £500,000 for failing to secure information of at least 14 million people after a computer system was compromised as result of a cyberattack.
An investigation by the ICO came to the conclusion that between July 2017 and April 2018 malware has been installed and collected personal data until the attack was detected. Due to the failure of DSG the attacker had access to 5.6 million payment card details and further personal data, inter alia full names, postcodes and email addresses.
The reason for the fine is seen in having poor security arrangements and failing to take adequate steps to protect personal data. The fine is based on the Data Protection Act 1998.
The director of the ICO, Steve Eckersley, said:
“Our investigation found systemic failures in the way DSG Retail Limited safeguarded personal data. It is very concerning that these failures related to basic, commonplace security measures, showing a complete disregard for the customers whose personal information was stolen. The contraventions in this case were so serious that we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation, but the fine would inevitably have been much higher under the GDPR.”
The ICO considered the individual freedom of DSG’s customers to be at risk. Customers would have to fear financial theft and identity fraud.
3. January 2020
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into effect on January 1, 2020 and will be the first step in the United States in regulating data privacy on the Internet. Currently, the US does not have a federal-level general consumer data privacy law that is comparable to that of the privacy laws in EU countries or even the supranational European GDPR.
But now, several other US States have taken inspiration from the CCPA and are in the process of bringing forth their own state legislation on consumer privacy protections on the Internet, including
- The Massachusetts Data Privacy Law “S-120“,
- The New York Privacy Act “S5642“,
- The Hawaii Consumer Privacy Protection Act “SB 418“,
- The Maryland Online Consumer Protection Act “SB 613“, and
- The North Dakota Bill “HB 1485“.
Like the CCPA, most of these new privacy laws have a broad definition of the term “Personal Information” and are aimed at protecting consumer data by strenghtening consumer rights.
However, the various law proposals differ in the scope of the consumer rights. All of them grant consumers the ‘right to access’ their data held by businesses. There will also be a ‘right to delete’ in most of these states, but only some give consumers a private ‘right of action’ for violations.
There are other differences with regards to the businesses that will be covered by the privacy laws. In some states, the proposed laws will apply to all businesses, while in other states the laws will only apply to businesses with yearly revenues of over 10 or 25 Million US-Dollars.
As more US states are beginning to introduce privacy laws, there is an increasing possiblity of a federal US privacy law in the near future. Proposals from several members of Congress already exist (Congresswomen Eshoo and Lofgren’s Proposal and Senators Cantwell/Schatz/Klobuchar/Markey’s Proposal and Senator Wicker’s Proposal).
11. December 2019
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Advocate General’s opinion in the case C-311/18 (‘Facebook Ireland and Schrems’) will be released on December 19, 2019. Originally, the CJEU announced that the opinion of the Advocate General in this case, Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, would be released on December 12, 2019. The CJEU did not provide a reason for this delay.
The prominent case deals with the complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) by privacy activist and lawyer Maximilian Schrems and the transfer of his personal data from Facebook Ireland Ltd. to Facebook Inc. in the U.S. under the European Commission’s controller-to-processor Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).
Perhaps, the most consequential question that the High Court of Ireland set before the CJEU is whether the transfers of personal data from the EU to the U.S. under the SCCs violate the rights of the individuals under Articles 7 and/or 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Question No. 4). The decision of the CJEU in “Schrems II” will also have ramifications on the parallel case T-738/16 (‘La Quadrature du net and others’). The latter case poses the question whether the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield for data transfers from the EU to the U.S. protects the rights of EU individuals sufficiently. If it does not, the European Commission would face a “Safe Harbor”-déjà vu after approving of the new Privacy Shield in its adequacy decision from 2016.
The CJEU is not bound to the opinion of the Advocate General (AG), but in some cases, the AG’s opinion may be a weighty indicator of the CJEU’s final ruling. The final decision by the Court is expected in early 2020.
18. November 2019
Websites, spezialized on health topics transfer information of website users to Google, Amazon and Facebook, as the Financial Times reports.
The transferred information are obtained through cookies and include medical symtoms and clinical pictures of the users.
Referring to the report of the Financial Times does the transfer take place without the express consent of the data subject, contrary to the Data Protection Law in the UK. Besides the legal obligations in the UK, the procedure of the website operators, using the cookie, contradicts also the legal requirements of the GDPR.
According to the requirements of the GDPR the processing of health data falls under Art. 9 GDPR and is a prohibition subject to permission, meaning, that the processing of health data is forbidden unless the data subject has given its explicit consent.
The report is also interesting considering the Cookie judgement of the CJEU (we reported). Based on the judgment, consent must be obtained for the use of each cookie.
Accordingly, the procedure of the website operators will (hopefully) change in order to comply with the new case law.
10. October 2019
On 23 August 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China published regulations on the cyber protection of personal data of children, which came into force on 1 October 2019. China thus enacted the first rules focusing exclusively on the protection of children’s personal data.
In the regulations, “children” refers to minors under the age of 14. This corresponds to the definition in the national “Information Security Technology – Personal Information Security Specification”.
The provisions regulate activities related to the collection, storage, use, transfer and disclosure of personal data of children through networks located on the territory of China. However, the provisions do not apply to activities conducted outside of China or to similar activities conducted offline.
The provisions provide a higher standard of consent than the Cybersecurity Law of China. To obtain the consent of a guardian, a network operator has to provide the possibility of refusal and expressly inform the guardian of the following:
- Purpose, means and scope of collection, storage, use, transfer and disclosure of children’s personal information;
- Storage location of children’s personal information, retention period and how the relevant information will be handled after expiration of the retention period;
- Safeguard measures protecting children’s personal information;
- Consequences of rejection by a guardian;
- The channels and means of filing or reporting complaints; and
- How to correct and delete children’s personal information.
The network operator also has to restrict internal access to children’s personal information. In particular, before accessing the information, personnel must obtain consent of the person responsible for the protection of children’s personal data or an authorised administrator.
If children’s personal data are processed by a third party processor, the network operator is obliged to carry out a security assessment of the data processor commissioned to process the children’s personal data. He also has to conclude an entrustment agreement with the data processor. The data processor is obliged to support the network operator in fulfilling the request of the guardian to delete the data of a child after termination of the service. Subletting or subcontracting by the data processor is prohibited.
If personal data of children is transferred to a third party, the network operator shall carry out a security assessment of the commissioned person or commission a third party to carry out such an assessment.
Children or their legal guardians have the right to demand the deletion of children’s personal data under certain circumstances. In any case, they have the right to demand the correction of personal data of children if they are collected, stored, used or disclosed by a network operator. In addition, the legal guardians have the right to withdraw their consent in its entirety.
In the event of actual or potential data breaches, the network operator is obliged to immediately initiate its emergency plan and take remedial action. If the violation has or may have serious consequences, the network operator must immediately report the violation to the competent authorities and inform the affected children and their legal guardians by e-mail, letter, telephone or push notification. Where it is challenging to send the notification to any data subject, the network operator shall take appropriate and effective measures to make the notification public. However, the rules do not contain a precise definition of the serious consequences.
In the event that the data breach is caused or observed by a data processor, the data processor is obliged to inform the network operator in good time.
5. September 2019
A database with more than 400 million phone numbers of Facebook users was publicly accessible online. Most of the records belong to American Facebook users (133 million), 50 million to users from Vietnam and 18 million to users from the UK. In each case the phone number was connected with the user’s Facebook ID, a long, unique and public number associated with the account.
As a result of the publicly accessible data the concerned users are put at risk for spam calls and SIM-swapping attacks. Furthermore, the passwords of the accounts can be changed so that the user cannot access his own Facebook profile.
IT-expert Sanyam Jain found the database and contacted TechCrunch after being unable to find the owner. TechCrunch verified the authenticity of the found data and then tried to determine the owner – without success. So they contacted the web host who turned the site down.
The database is not accessible at the moment, but it is still unknown how the data was collected and who uploaded the information. It is possible, that the ability to find friends by phone number on Facebook was misused to create the database. This feature was disabled by Facebook in April 2018. In connection to this new infringement, Facebook just announced that there is no evidence for a hacking attack.
Update: on Friday September 6th 2019 a copy of the database appeared on the internet, so that the data is currently publicly accessible again.
27. August 2019
While other browser developers are critical of tracking, Google wants to introduce new standards to continue enabling personalized advertising. With the implementation of the “Privacy Sandbox” and the introduction of a new identity management system, the developer of the Chrome browser wants to bring browsers to an uniform level in processing of user data and protect the privacy of users more effectively.
The suggestions are the first steps of the privacy initiative announced by Google in May. Google has published five ideas. For example, browsers are to manage a “Privacy Budget” that gives websites limited access to user data so that users can be sorted into an advertising target group without being personally identified. Google also plans to set up central identity service providers that offer limited access to user data via an application programming interface (API) and inform users about the information they have passed on.
Measures like Apple’s, which have introduced Intelligent Tracking Protection, are not in Google’s interest, as Google generates much of its revenue from personalized advertising. In a blog post, Google also said that blocking cookies promotes non-transparent techniques such as fingerprinting. Moreover, without the ability to display personalized advertising, the future of publishers would be jeopardized. Their costs are covered by advertising. Recent studies have shown, that the financing of publishers decreases by an average of 52% if advertising loses relevance due to the removal of cookies.
Based on these ideas, the discussion among developers about the future of web browsers and how to deal with users’ privacy should now begin. Google’s long-term goal is a standardization process to which all major browser developers should adhere. So far, Google has had only limited success with similar initiatives.
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