While it’s unclear precisely what the criminals plan to do with all this information, it could potentially be used for social engineering attacks on a large scale in the future. As a result, they could gain access to the personal information of millions of people. This particular breach happened when cybercriminals scraped data from Facebook’s servers using a misconfiguration in their contact importer. The exposed database contained the personal information of millions of people, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, names, birthdays, and even some email addresses. It was brought to light by cybersecurity firm Symantec. The Facebook data breach of 2021 is still fresh in many memories. The vulnerability was discovered in 2021 by a white hat security group and has existed since 2019. This included the user’s name, date of birth, current city, and posts made on their wall. April – Facebook Data BreachĪ Facebook data breach exposed over 533 million individuals’ personal information to hackers. In this case, the vulnerabilities were discovered and patches were released by Microsoft in 2020, but many customers hadn’t updated their systems. To help protect against this kind of attack, Microsoft explained that its customers should immediately install all software patches for their systems. Once this happened, the attackers logged in and installed malware that created command-and-control proxies for their use. The vulnerability allowed any user who had physical or virtual access at the time of login to gain full administrative rights. The attack began when hackers used stolen passwords combined with previously undetected vulnerabilities on servers running Microsoft Exchange software. While the attack wasn’t directed specifically at Microsoft, the group “primarily targets entities in the United States for the purpose of exfiltrating information from a number of industry sectors,” according to Microsoft’s notification to customers. The attack affected over 30,000 organizations across the United States, including local governments, government agencies, and businesses. The Chinese hacking group known as Hafnium attacked Microsoft in March of 2021. March – Microsoft Software Caused Data Breach In this article, we’ll examine the top 5 security breaches of 2021 and detail the key takeaways for IT professionals. A lack of endpoint security could give hackers free reign for campaigns involving ransomware or the theft of customer information. – a significant cyber attack may be inevitable. Without proper security measures on endpoints – such as laptops, mobile devices, etc. They may not have adequate security measures and practices in place and, as a result, can leave an organization’s critical data exposed. Third-party vendors are often a weak link in an organization’s cybersecurity defenses. Ransomware was responsible for most of the data breaches in 2021. These types of attacks have been on the rise over the past few years, and 2021 was no exception. This type of attack involves hackers encrypting or locking down files on a victim’s system until the hackers get what they want. Ransomware is malware that blocks access to devices or data until a specific demand (often a financial ransom) is paid. The risk factors appear to have altered this year, with ransomware, third-party flaws, phishing attacks, and undetected security gaps supplanting human error as the leading cause of data breaches however, unwitting end users play a huge role in these kinds of attacks, even if the attack vector itself doesn’t explicitly fall along a “human error”. Hackers are finding new and innovative ways to gain access to data, and it’s more important than ever for businesses to have robust cybersecurity measures in place. While we’ve not reached the dizzying heights of 2017 and its 1,529 data breaches, we don’t have anything to celebrate.Īs businesses and organizations become more reliant on technology, they become more vulnerable to cyberattacks. This year, we’ve exceeded the number of breaches seen in 2020. In today’s digital age, cybercrime is on the rise, and the number of breaches experienced by businesses and individuals is only growing.
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