Category: Cyber Security
19. August 2019
The Israeli security researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar discovered the unprotected and mostly unencrypted database of Biostar 2 during an Internet search.
Biostar 2 is a web-based biometric locking system that provides centralized control of access to secure facilities such as warehouses and office buildings. The researchers were given access to over 27.8 million records and 23 gigabytes of data, including fingerprint data, facial recognition data, facial photos of users, user names and passwords, and protocols for accessing facilities. Among others, the system is used by the British Metropolitan Police, insurance companies and banks.
Rotem told the Guardian: “The access allows first of all seeing millions of users are using this system to access different locations and see in real time which user enters which facility or which room in each facility, even.”
He also states that they were able to change data and add new users. So they could have added their own photo and fingerprint to an existing user account and could have had access to the buildings that user had access to or could have added a new user with their own photo and fingerprints.
The intensity of this data breach was particularly large because Biostar 2 is used in 1.5 million locations around the world and fingerprints, unlike passwords, cannot be changed.
Before Rotem and Locar turned to the Guardian, they made several attempts to contact Suprema, the security company responsible for Biostar 2. Meanwhile, the vulnerability has been closed.
To the Guardian, Suprema’s marketing director said they had conducted an “in-depth evaluation” of the information provided: “If there has been any definite threat on our products and/or services, we will take immediate actions and make appropriate announcements to protect our customers’ valuable businesses and assets.”
Rotem said that such problems not only occur at Suprema, but that he contacts three or four companies a week with similar problems.
12. August 2019
Both, Twitter and Instagram admitted in the last week that they had some privacy issues regarding the personal data of users in connection with external advertising companies.
Twitter published a statement explaining that the setting choices the user made in regards to ads on Twitter, ecspecially regarding data sharing, were not followed always. Twitter admitted that the setting choices not have worked as intended. The consequence of which is that on the one hand maybe data was shared with advertising companies in case the user clicked or viewed an advertisement. On the other hand it is possible that personalized ads have been shown to the user based on inferences. Both things could have happened even if no permission was given.
The statement also states that the problems were fixed on August 5, 2019 and no personal data like passwords or email accounts were affected. At the moment Twitter is still investigating how many and which users were concerned.
According to a report on businessinsider Instagram had to admit that the trusted partner Hyp3r tracked millions of users’ location data, secretly saved their stories and flout its rules. Hyp3r, a startup from San Francisco is spezialized on location related advertising and evaluated millions of users’ public stories. The CEO of Hyp3r published a note on the company’s website and contradicts the comparisons with Cambridge Analytica and says that no prohibited practives were used. Privacy is a major and important concern for the company. Whether this is the case can only be left open at this point. Be that as it may, for European users of the platform there is no known legal basis for such an approach.
Nonetheless, Instagram’s careless privacy and data security mechanisms enabled this approach. Even though Instagram ended the cooperation with Hyp3r and stated that they changed the platform to protect the users, the problems of the Facebook-owned app regarding the protection of users personal data are still there.
30. July 2019
In an attempt to settle a long-running litigation of a class-action case started in 2010, Google agrees to pay $13 million over claims that it violated U.S. wire-tapping laws. The issue came from vehicles used for its Street View mapping Project that captured and collected personal data from private wifi networks along the way.
Street View is a feature that lets users interact with panoramic and detailed images of locations all around the world. The legal action began when several people whose data was collected sued Google after it admitted the cars photographing neighborhoods for Street View had also gathered emails, passwords and other private information from wifi networks in more than 30 countries.
While the company was quick to call this collection of data a mistake, investigators found out that the capture of personal data was built and embedded by Google engineers in the software of the vehicles to intentionally collect personal data from accessed networks.
The new agreement would make Google to be required to destroy any collected data via Street View, agree not to use Street View to collect personal data from wifi networks without consent, and to create webpages and instructions to explain to people how to secure their wireless content.
Google had been asked to refrain from using and collecting personal data from wifi networks in an earlier settlement in 2013, which raises questions as to why it was necessary to include it in the current settlement as well.
22. July 2019
The picture editing app FaceApp, which became increasingly popular on social media, was confronted with various concerns about their privacy.
Created in Russia by a four-person start-up company, the app applies a newly developed technology that uses neural networks to modify a face in any photo while remaining photorealistic. In this process, no filters are placed on the photo, but the image itself is modified with the help of deep learning technology.
However, the app is accused of not explaining that the images are uploaded to a cloud for editing. In addition, the app is accused of uploading not only the image selected by the user, but also the entire camera roll in the background. The latter in particular raises high security concerns due to the large number of screenshots that people nowadays take of sensitive information such as access data or bank details.
While there is no evidence for the latter accusation and FaceApp emphasizes in its statement that no image other than the one chosen by the user is uploaded, they confirm the upload into a cloud.
The upload to the cloud justifies FaceApp with reasons of performance and traffic. With this, the app developers want to ensure that the user does not upload the photo repeatedly during each editing process.
Finally, FaceApp declares that no user data will be sold or passed on to third parties. Also, in 99 % of cases, they are unable to identify a person because the app can be and actually is used without registration by a large number of users.
18. July 2019
After a cyberattack on the Bulgarian’s tax agency (NRA) millions of taxpayers’ financial data has been stolen. In an estimate, it is said that most working adults in the 7 million country are affected by some of their data being compromised. The stolen data included names, adresses, income and social security information.
The attack happened in June, but an E-mail from the self-proclaimed perpetrator was sent to Bulgarian media on Monday. It stated that more than 110 databases of the agency had been compromised, the hacker calling the NRA’s cybersecurity a parody. The Bulgarian media were further offered access to the stolen data. One stolen file, e-mailed to the newspaper 24 Chasa, contained up to 1,1 million personal identification numbers with income, social security and healthcare figures.
The country’s finance minister Vladislav Goranov has appologized in parliament and to the Bulgarian citizens, adding that about 3% of the tax agency’s database had been affected. He made clear that whoever attempted to exploit the stolen data would fall under the impact of Bulgarian law.
In result to this hacking attack, the Bulgarian tax agency now faces a fine of up to 20 million euros by the Commission of Personal Data Protection (CPDP). In addition, the issue has reignited an old debate about the lax cybersecurity standards in Bulgaria, and its adjustement to the modern times.
17. July 2019
On Tuesday last week, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) held the hearing on case 311/18, commonly known as “Schrems II”, following a complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) by Maximilian Schrems about the transfer of his personal data from Facebook Ireland to Facebook in the U.S. The case deals with two consecutive questions. The initial question refers to whether U.S. law, the Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA), that consists a legal ground for national security agencies to access the personal data of citizens of the European Union (EU) violates EU data protection laws. If confirmed, this would raise the second question namely whether current legal data transfer mechanisms could be invalid (we already reported on the backgrounds).
If both, the US-EU Privacy Shield and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) as currently primeraly used transfer mechanisms, were ruled invalid, businesses would probably have to deal with a complex and diffucult scenario. As Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, senior counsel at Future of Privacy Forum said, the hearing would have had a particularly higher impact than the first Schrems/EU-US Safe Harbor case, because this time it could affect not only data transfers from the EU to the U.S., but from the EU to all countries around the world where international data transfers are based on the SCCs.
This is what also Facebook lawyer, Paul Gallagher, argued. He told the CJEU that if SCCs were hold invalid, “the effect on trade would be immense.” He added that not all U.S. companies would be covered by FISA – that would allow them to provide the law enforcement agencies with EU personal data. In particular, Facebook could not be hold responsible for unduly handing personal data over to national security agencies, as there was no evidence of that.
Eileen Barrington, lawyer of the US government assured, of course, by referring to a “hypothetical scenario” in which the US would tap data streams from a cable in the Atlantic, it was not about “undirected” mass surveillance. But about “targeted” collection of data – a lesson that would have been learned from the Snowden revelations according to which the US wanted to regain the trust of Europeans. Only suspicious material would be filtered out using particular selectors. She also had a message for the European feeling of security: “It has been proven that there is an essential benefit to the signal intelligence of the USA – for the security of American as well as EU citizens”.
The crucial factor for the outcome of the proceedings is likely to be how valid the CJEU considers the availability of legal remedies to EU data subjects. Throughout the hearing, there were serious doubts about this. The monitoring of non-US citizens data is essentially based on a presidential directive and an executive order, i.e. government orders and not on formal laws. However, EU citizens will be none the wiser, as particularly, referring to many critisists’ conlusion, they do not know whether they will be actually surveilled or not. It remains the issue regarding the independence of the ombudsperson which the US has committed itself to establish in the Privacy Shield Agreement. Of course, he or she may be independent in terms of the intelligence agencies, but most likely not of the government.
However, Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, the Advocate General responsible for the case, intends to present his proposal, which is not binding on the Judges, on December 12th. The court’s decision is then expected in early 2020. Referring to CJEU judge and judge-rapporteur in the case, Thomas von Danwitz, the digital services and networking would be considerably compromised, anyways, if the CJEU would declare the current content of the SCC ineffective.
15. July 2019
According to a report of the Washington Post the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved a $ 5 billion (approx. € 4,4 billion) settlement with Facebook. The settlement was reached between the FTC and Facebook due to various Data Protection incidents, in particular the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The settlement relies on a three to two vote – the FTC’s three republicans supported the fine the two democrats were against it- and terminates the procedure for investigating Facebook’s privacy violations against users’ personal information. The fine of $ 5 billion is the highest fine ever assessed against a tech company, but even if it sounds like a very high fine, it only corresponds to the amount of the monthly turnover and is therefore not very high in relative terms. So far, the highest fine was $ 22,5 million for Google in 2012.
The decision of the FTC needs to be approved by the Justice Department. As a rule, however, this is a formality.
This is not the first fine Facebook has to accept in connection with various data protection incidents and certainly not the last. Investigations against Facebook are still ongoing in Spain as well as in Germany. In addition, Facebook has been criticized for quite some time for privacy incidents.
11. July 2019
After a data breach in 2018, which affected 500 000 customers, British Airways (BA) has now been fined a record £183m by the UK’s Information Commissioners Office (ICO). According to the BBC, Alex Cruz, chairman and CEO of British Airways, said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the ICO’s initial findings.
The breach happened by a hacking attack that managed to get a script on to the BA website. Unsuspecting users trying to access the BA website had been diverted to a false website, which collected their information. This information included e-mail addresses, names and credit card information. While BA had stated that they would reimburse every customer that had been affected, its owner IAG declared through its chief executive that they would take “all appropriate steps to defend the airline’s position”.
The ICO said that it was the biggest penalty that they had ever handed out and made public under the new rules of the GDPR. “When an organization fails to protect personal data from loss, damage or theft, it is more than an inconvenience,” ICO Commissioner Elizabeth Dunham said to the press.
In fact, the GDPR allows companies to be fined up to 4% of their annual turnover over data protection infringements. In relation, the fine of £183m British Airways received equals to 1,5% of its worldwide turnover for the year 2017, which lies under the possible maximum of 4%.
BA can still put forth an appeal in regards to the findings and the scale of the fine, before the ICO’s final decision is made.
11. June 2019
U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP) announced on Monday, 10th June 2019, that photos of travelers, their cars and their license plate images were stolen during a data breach.
The network of CBP itself was not affected by the breach, but the photos were transferred to a subcontractor and stolen by a hack at the subcontractor. The name of the subcontractor was not mentioned. According to US media reports, the subcontractor is Perceptics which was hacked in May 2019.
CBP announced: “CBP learned that a subcontractor, in violation of CBP policies and without CBP’s authorization or knowledge, had transferred copies of license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP to the subcontractor’s company network.” CBP has not terminated its cooperation with the hacked subcontractor despite breaches of data protection and security regulations.
CBP was informed about the breach on 31st May 2019. The breach affects nearly 100.000 people who travelled the USA. Besides the photos of travelers, their cars and license plates neither passport or other travel documents nor images of airline passengers were involved. The photos show travellers crossing either the US border to Canada or Mexico.
Until now, the hacked data could neither be found on the Internet nor in the Dark net.
15. May 2019
San Francisco is the first major city in the US that has banned the use of facial recognition software by the authorities. The Board of Supervisors decided at 14th May that the risk of violating civil rights by using such technology far outweighs the claimed benefits. According to the current vote, the municipal police and other municipal authorities may not acquire, hold or use any facial recognition technology in the future.
The proposal is due to the fact that using facial recognition software threatens to increase racial injustice and “the ability to live free from constant monitoring by the government”. Civil rights advocates and researchers warn that the technology could easily be misused to monitor immigrants, unjustly target African-Americans or low-income neighborhoods, in case governmental oversight fails.
It sent a particularly strong message to the nation, coming from a city transformed by tech, Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill said. However, the ban is part of broader legislation aiming to restrict the use of surveillance technologies. However, airports, ports or other facilities operated by the federal authorities as well as businesses and private users are explicitly excluded from the ban.
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