Tag: Data breach
19. September 2019
On Monday, 16th of September, it has been revealed that the detailed information of potencially every citizen of Ecuador has been freely available online as part of a massive data breach resulting from an incorrectly configured database. The leak, detected by security researchers of vpnMentor during a routine large-scale web mapping project, exposed more than 20 million individuals, inclusing close to 7 million children, giving access to 18 GB of data.
In effect Ecuador counts close to 17 million citizens, making it possible that almost every citizen has had some data compromised. This also includes government officials, high profile persons like Julian Assange, and the Ecuadorian President.
In their report, vpnMentor designates that it was able to track the server back to its owner, an ecuadorian company named Novaestrat, which is a consulting company providing services in data analytics, strategic marketing and software development.
It also mentioned several examples of the entries it had found in the database, including the types of data that were leaked. Those came down to full names, gender and birth information, home and e-mail adresses, telephone numbers, financial information, family members and employment information.
Access to the data has been cut off by the ecuadorian Computer Emergency Response Team, but the highly private and sensitive nature of the leaked information could create long lasting privacy issues for the citizens of the country.
In a twitter post, Telecommunications Minister Andres Michelena announced that the data protection bill, which had been in the works for months, will be submitted to the National Assembly within 72 hours. On top of that, an investigation into the possibility of a violation of personal privacy by Novaestrat has been opened.
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.
26. July 2019
The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) imposed a € 180.000 fine on a French insurance company for violating customer data security on their website.
Active Assurance is an insurance intermediary and distributor of motor insurances to customers. On their website, people can request offers, subscribe to contracts and access their personal space.
In 2018, CNIL received a complaint from an Active Assurance customer, saying that he had been able access other users’ data. The other accounts were accessible via hypertext links referred on a search engine. Customers’ documents were also available by slightly changing the URL. Among those records were drivers’ licences, bank statements and documents revealing whether someone has been subject of a licence withdrawal or hit and run.
CNIL informed the company about the violations and a few days later, the company stated that measures had been taken to rectify the infringements. After an on-site audit at the company’s premises, CNIL found that the measures taken were not sufficient and that Active Assurance violates Art. 32 GDPR. Active Assurance should have ensured that only authorized persons had access to the documents. The company should have also instructed the customers to use strong passwords and it should not have send them the passwords in plain text by e-mail.
Based on the seriousness of the breach and the number of people involved, CNIL imposed a fine of € 180.000.
18. July 2019
Google may face further investigations under the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR), after unauthorized audio recordings have been forwarded to subcontractors. The Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) has confirmed through a spokesperson that they have received a data breach notification concerning the issue last week.
The recordings were exposed by the Belgian broadcast VRT, said to affect 1000 clips of conversations in the region of Belgium and the Netherlands. Being logged by Google Assistant, the recordings were then sent to Google’s subcontractors for review. At least 153 of those recordings were not authorized by Google’s wake phrase “Ok/Hey, Google,” and were never meant to be recorded in the first place. They contained personal data reaching from family conversations over bedroom chatter to business calls with confidential information.
Google has addressed this violation of their data security policies in a blog post. It said that the audio recordings were sent to experts, who understand nuances and accents, in order to refine Home’s linguistic abilities, which is a critical part in the process of building speech technology. Google stresses that the storing of recorded data on its services is turned off by default, and only sends audio data to Google once its wake phrase is said. The recordings in question were most likely initiated by the users saying a phrase that sounded similar to “Ok/Hey, Google,” therefore confusing Google Assistant and turning it on.
According to Google’s statement, Security and Privacy teams are working on the issue and will fully review its safeguards to prevent this sort of misconduct from happening again. If, however, following investigations by the IDPC discover a GDPR violation on the matter, it could result in significant financial penalty for the tech giant.
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.
2. July 2019
The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, recently signed the House Bill 4390 (HB 4390), which modifies the state’s current Data Breach Notification law and introduces an advisory council (“Texas Privacy Privacy Protection Advisory Council”) charged with studying data privacy laws in Texas, other states and relevant other jurisdictions.
Prior to the new amendment, businesses had to disclose Data Breaches to the Data Subjects “as quickly as possible”. Now, a concrete time period for notifying individuals whose sensitive personal information was acquired by an unauthorized person is determined by the bill. Individual notice must now be provided within 60 days after discovering the breach.
If more than 250 residents of Texas are subject to a Data Breach the Texas Attorney General must also be notified within 60 days. Such a notification must include:
– A detailed description of the nature and circumstances of the data breach;
– The number of the affected residents at that time;
– The measures taken regarding the breach and any measures the responsible person intends to take after the notification;
– Information on whether the law enforcement is engaged in investigating the breach.
The amendments take effect on January, 1 2020.
13. June 2019
The Spanish data protection authority Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) has imposed a fine of 250.000 EUR on the organisers of the two Spanish professional football leagues for data protection infringements.
The organisers, Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional (LFP), operate an app called “La Liga”, which aims to uncover unlicensed performances of games broadcasted on pay-TV. For this purpose, the app has recorded a sample of the ambient sounds during the game times to detect any live game transmissions and combined this with the location data. Privacy-ticker already reported.
AEPD criticized that the intended purpose of the collected data had not been made transparent enough, as it is necessary according to Art. 5 paragraph 1 GDPR. Users must approve the use explicitly and the authorization for the microphone access can also be revoked in the Android settings. However, AEPD is of the opinion that La Liga has to warn the user of each data processing by microphone again. In the resolution, the AEPD points out that the nature of the mobile devices makes it impossible for the user to remember what he agreed to each time he used the La Liga application and what he did not agree to.
Furthermore, AEPD is of the opinion that La Liga has violated Art. 7 paragraph 3 GDPR, according to which the user has the possibility to revoke his consent to the use of his personal data at any time.
La Liga rejects the sanction because of injustice and will proceed against it. It argues that the AEPD has not made the necessary efforts to understand how the technology works. They explain that the technology used is designed to produce only one particular acoustic fingerprint. This fingerprint contains only 0.75% of the information. The remaining 99.25% is discarded, making it technically impossible to interpret human voices or conversations. This fingerprint is also converted into an alphanumeric code (hash) that is not reversible to the original sound. Nevertheless, the operators of the app have announced that they will remove the controversial feature as of June 30.
11. June 2019
On 28 May 2019, the Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) imposed the first fine since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. The Belgian DPA fined a Belgian mayor 2.000 EUR for abusing use of personal data.
The Belgian DPA received a complaint from the data subjects alleging that their personal data collected for local administrative purposes had been further used by the mayor for election campaign purposes. The parties were then heard by the Litigation Chamber of the Belgian DPA. Finally, the Belgian DPA ruled that the mayor’s use of the plaintiff’s personal data violated the purpose limitation principle of the GDPR, since the personal data was originally collected for a different purpose and was incompatible with the purpose for which the mayor used the data.
In deciding on the amount of the fine, the Belgian DPA took into account the limited number of data subjects, the nature, gravity and duration of the infringement, resulting in a moderate sum of 2.000 EUR. Nevertheless, the decision conveys the message that compliance with the GDPR is the responsibility of each data controller, including public officials.
7. June 2019
The French Data Protection Authority “Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés” (CNIL) issued a 400k euro fine for the French real estate company “Sergic” for violating the GDPR.
Sergic is specialized in real estate development, purchase, sale, rental and property management and has published the website www.sergic.com , which allows rental candidates to upload the necessary documents for preparing their file.
In August 2018, a Sergic user contacted the CNIL reporting that he had unencrypted access, from his personal space on the website, to other users’ uploaded files by slightly changing the URL. On September 7, 2018, an online check revealed that rental candidates’ uploaded documents were actually freely accessible for others without prior authentication. Among the documents were copies of identity cards, health cards, tax notices and divorce judgements. CNIL informed Sergic on the same day of this security incident and the violation of personal data. It became apparent that Sergic had been aware of this since March 2018 and, even though it had initiated IT developments to correct it, the final correction did not take place until September 17, 2018.
Based on the investigation, the responsible CNIL body found two violations of the GDPR. Firstly, Sergic had failed to fulfil its obligations according to Art. 32 GDPR, which obliges controllers to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure a secure level of protection of the personal data. This includes for example a procedure to ensure that personal documents cannot be accessed without prior authentication of the user. In addition, there is the time that the company took to correct the error.
Secondly, the CNIL found out that Sergic kept all the documents sent by candidates in active base, although they had not accessed rental accommodation for more than the time required to allocate housing. According to the GDPR, the controller has the obligation to delete data immediately if they are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed and no other purpose justifies the storage of the data in an active database.
The CNIL imposed a fine of € 400.000 and decided to make its sanction public due to inter alia the seriousness of the breach, the lack of due diligence by the company and the fact that the documents revealed intimate aspects of people’s lives.
20. May 2019
On May 10, 2019, Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey, signed a bill amending the law regarding notification of data breaches in New Jersey. The purpose of the amendment is to extend the definition of personal data to include online account information.
The amendment requires companies subject to the law to notify New Jersey residents of security breaches concerning the user name, e-mail address or other account holder identifying information.
The amendment states that companies should notify their customers affected by violations of such information electronically or otherwise and instruct them to promptly change any password and security questions or answers or take other appropriate measures to protect their online account with the company. The same shall be done for all other online accounts for which the customer uses the same username or e-mail address and password or the same security question and answer.
In addition, the amended law prohibits the company from sending notifications to the e-mail account of a person affected by a security breach. Instead, notifications must be sent in another legally required manner or by a clear and unambiguous notification sent online when the customer’s account is connected to an IP address and the company knows that the customer regularly accesses their account from that online location.
The amendment will take effect on 1 September 2019.
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