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Major UK energy supplier, Npower, has had to scrap its app after cybercriminals stole sensitive customer information, including financial data. Having first been reported by MoneySavingExpert.com, Npower has stated customer information was exploited after login details were taken from other websites. This common cyberattack tactic – known as credential stuffing – allowed the hackers to gain access to customer accounts. Npower had confirmed that not all accounts were accessed and that the customers that were...

According to the office of U.S. Senator Ron Wyden and a number of American security experts, Microsoft could have prevented some of the damage caused by the SolarWinds hack had they fixed known problems in the cloud software that facilitated the hack. As these issues were not fixed it resulted in at least nine federal government agencies being compromised. The vulnerability allowed hackers to fake the identity of government employees in order to gain access...

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has taken its servers offline after it was victim to a cyberattack by the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang. The Dutch Research Council is the main funding research body for institutes in the Netherlands, with investments of around one billion euros per year. They announced in early February that their network had been hacked, revealing information about the impact it had on their activity, but no information on the actual incident. It...

Npower, an energy provider owned by E.ON, one of the UK's biggest energy providers, removed its app after it experienced a cyberattack in which users' login data was stolen and used to access customer accounts. Although the energy provider has not yet revealed how many customers were affected by the breach, it has been speculated that users' contact information and some financial details may have been accessed, while MoneySavingExpert.com has said that full account numbers...

An Oxford University lab that has been researching the Covid-19 pandemic has been hacked. Forbes reported that Oxford University confirmed that an incident has been detected at the Division of Structural Biology. Since the attack was confirmed the university has contacted the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) who will now investigate the attack. A representative from the university said, "we have identified and contained the problem and are now investigating further.” They went on to...

Edgescan, a full-stack vulnerability management service, has just released their Vulnerability Stat Report for 2021, and it’s confirmed that 2020 really was as bad as we all thought it was. The stats report reveals a number of alarming statistics and trends from 2020, taking a deep-dive into vulnerability metrics from known vulnerabilities (CVE), Malware, Ransomware and visibility standpoint (exposed services). The data used in the report has been compiled by Edgescan from the thousands of...

Palantir is a US data firm that has had long-term involvement in the analysis of large amounts of NHS public health data. Open Democracy, an independent global media platform, has taken legal action against the NHS over its contract and involvement with Palantir, also stating that the firm lobbied a top NHS official. Palantir has a history of being targetted by privacy campaigners. The firm has access to vast amounts of private data as it...

Last night the US Federal Reserve suffered a major IT systems outage which stopped all ACH transactions, wire transfers, as well as a number of other services from operating. The system outage affected the majority of electronic service provided by the Federal Reserve Bank. The outage prevented services such as Check 21, Central Bank, Account Services, FedLine Command, National Settlement, FedACH, FedCash, Fedwire Funds, FedLine Advantage, FedLine Direct, FedLine Web, and Fedwire Securities from functioning....

Following the report last month, that multiple Indian government websites were leaking COVID-19 test reports, Sourajeet Majumder has discovered another website exposing millions more. The security researcher shared his findings last week: "I have found an issue in an Indian Government site which is resulting in the leakage of test reports of EVERYONE who took a COVID-19 test in a particular state. These reports have sensitive information about the citizens in them like name, age,...

GCHQ has announced that it has embraced artificial intelligence to uncover patterns in global data to counter misinformation and catch child abusers. Jeremy Fleming, the director of GCHQ stated: “AI, like so many technologies, offers great promise for society, prosperity and security. Its impact on GCHQ is equally profound.” AI allows modern computers to learn to analyse data and find spies or information that the human brain is likely to miss. In a report released...