Cyber Security News Roundup – 20th February 2023

It's the beginning of a new week, and that means a round up of some of the cyber security and data protection news headlines over the last 7 days! To learn more about each story, click the headings.

Cloudflare Says it Blocked a New Record Strength DDoS Attack 14/02

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation firm Cloudflare say that they have recently blocked the largest HTTPS DDoS incident ever, which at its peak exceeded 71 million requests per second. Deploying more than 30,000 IP addresses, Cloudflare state that this attack is just one part of a larger campaign, with the unknown attackers targeting a number of other companies. The size, sophistication, and frequency of DDoS attacks is becoming a cause for concern, with the frequency of HTTPS attacks growing by 79% year on year. (TechRadar)

Cyber Criminals Breach America's Largest Beverage Manufacturer Pepsi 14/02

America’s largest manufacturer and distributor of Pepsi-cola drinks , Pepsi Bottling Ventures, has suffered a data breach that has seen personal and financial information stolen by cyber criminals. According to Pepsi’s breach notification letter, the breach occurred on the 23^rd of December and was only discovered on the 10^th of January, with a long list of information stolen that includes names, addresses, email addresses, financial data, driving licence numbers, and others. (Cyber News)

City of Oakland Declares State of Emergency After Ransomware Attack 15/02

The City of Oakland, California, has declared a state of emergency following a ransomware attack that forced all of the city’s IT systems to go offline on the 8^th of February. Emergency services remained available, but all non-emergency services were impacted and many taken down immediately remain offline. Oakland is now working with technology and forensics firms to perform extensive recovery, analysis, and remediation. (Bleeping Computer)

Scandinavian Airlines Says Cyber Attack Caused Passenger Data Leak 16/02

Scandinavian Airlines has warned its customers that the recent outage of its website and mobile app was caused by a cyber attack that has exposed customer data. The attack caused a malfunction of their online system, which exposed customer data to other passengers including names, email addresses, and the last four digits of payment cards, however no passport details were leaked. The breach was claimed by a group of ‘hacktivists’ called Anonymous Sudan, who stated that the attack was in retaliation for the actions of far-right Swedish groups that caused outrage among Muslims globally. (Bleeping Computer)

Hackers Steal Source Code and Install Malware During Multi-Year GoDaddy Breach 17/02

Unknown attackers have stolen source code and installed malware on the servers of web hosting giant GoDaddy, after successfully breaching its cPanel shared hosting environment. In December 2022 GoDaddy first discovered that their website was redirecting users to random domains, but in reality the attackers had access to the network for multiple years. Previous disclosed breaches in 2020 and 2021 are now known to be linked to this multi-year campaign, with the November 2021 breach in particular affecting 1.2 million managed WordPress customers. Law enforcement has confirmed that a sophisticated and organised group is behind the attacks, with a goal of infecting websites and servers with malware for the delivery of phishing campaigns, malware distribution and other related malicious activities. (Bleeping Computer)

FBI Investigating a Cyber Security Incident on its Network 17/02

According to reports, the FBI is investigating after detecting malicious cyber activity on their network. According to the Agency, the “isolated incident” is now contained and they are working to understand its scope and overall impact. Despite reports from CNN that the hack involved a New York Field Office computer that was being used to investigate child exploitation, the FBI stated that there was no further comment. (Bleeping Computer)

Attempted cyber attacks occur every second, and as we can see from the recent headlines, constantly change in nature. It's vital that your organisation is as protected as possible from all forms of cyber crime, so Contact Celerity to find out how we could protect your business!