Weekly Cybersecurity Recap February 24
Table of Contents
- By Steven
- Published: Feb 24, 2023
- Last Updated: Feb 27, 2023
We've seen major data breaches over the past week, including a million medical patients being exposed and more than 12 million online food orders being listed online. Many of these breaches were caused by a mistake made by an employee of these organizations, and it shows how damaging a single mistake can be. This is why it's important to carefully avoid suspicious emails, avoid clicking links you don't understand, and monitor your finances and private information with care. See what happened over the last week and find out if you were affected by any of these major breaches.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a massive web hosting company that handles domain registrations, different types of web hosting services, and more. This well-known company suffered a multi-year attack that allowed hackers to get into the very source code of its services and redirect customer websites to malicious locations. An organization of hackers worked their way through Godaddy's defenses and inserted harmful code into the company's files. The attackers were able to take control of customer websites and used many of the sites for data phishing schemes to try and break into even more computers.
Xavier University
The Xavier University of Louisiana, a private college in New Orleans, recently suffered from a Ransomware attack that exposed the information of thousands of students online. The attack occurred when a hacker broke into the file network, and Social Security numbers were made available due to the attack. Even universities suffer mistakes due to poor security measures, and as a student, you have to rely on the University to protect your information for you.
Community Health Systems
Community Health Systems is a major medical provider with over 79 hospitals and more than 1,000 medical sites throughout the country. You always expect medical facilities to protect patient data effectively, but this company lost patient data through its third-party secure file transfer solution GoAnywhere MFT. Nearly 1 million patients had their information exposed, including their health history and Social Security number, when key file transfers were intercepted in a cyber attack. When even health organizations aren't safe from cyber-attacks, you should always keep an eye on your credit and financial information as a precaution.
Weee!
Weee!, a major food delivery service, recently had its delivery logs hacked into and exposed. This attack exposed the delivery information for more than 11 million orders. Weee! Protects its customers by destroying any financial information, but names, addresses, and potential security codes for gated communities were exposed in this attack. Always keep in mind what information you're exposing to online delivery companies when you place orders with them because they aren't always as secure as they seem.
Teijin Automotive Technologies
Teijin Automotive Technologies is a huge materials manufacturer in the U.S. that creates lightweight materials for use on cars, boats, heavy equipment, and more. This company suffered from a data breach that exposed more than 25,000 employees. The breach began with an email phishing attack with a malicious link an internal employee clicked. It's possible to avoid these attacks by being careful about what links you open and by avoiding strange emails entirely.
