Tag: cyber attack

The social network has warned some of its users of the chance for state-sponsored hackers accessing their data.

Twitter has now released an alert for some of the users of its social network, cautioning them of a certain online and mobile security issue that may have involved state-sponsored hackers attempting to access sensitive data from within their accounts.

This is the first time the company has issued this type of warning to any of its users.

Within the mobile security and online privacy notice, it indicated that as of that time, there had not been any indication that would suggest that the hackers had actually managed to access any of the sensitive information from within a “small group of accounts” that had been targeted during the attempts. That said, the letter didn’t provide any more information about the attack, nor did it suggest any potential suspects that were being sought as a part of the company’s investigation into this issue.

This mobile security and privacy notice is only the latest among several data breach concerns from state-sponsored organizations.

Twitter is far from alone in the threat it has faced by way of cyberattacks. Many companies, government agencies and media outlets have all seen their fair share of data breaches from hackers. Several news sites have now been reporting on the warning that Twitter has issued. Among them, one was actually a recipient of the notice. It was a company called Coldhak, which is a nonprofit organization based in Winnipeg, Canada.

That company’s notice explained that the cyber attackers could potentially have been seeking to breach mobile security or online privacy barriers in order to gain access to information such as IP addresses, email addresses and/or telephone numbers. That organization’s own Twitter account (@coldhakca) has since retweeted a several reports from other people who have also claimed to have received the notification from Twitter.

Neither Coldhak nor any of the other users have given any indication as to why they may have been targeted for this type of cyberattack. One of the directors of the nonprofit, Colin Childs, said that despite having received the notice from Twitter, his organization has detected “no noticeable impact of this attack.” Facebook and Google have also issued their own versions of notifications to let users know when state-sponsored attacks have targeted their accounts.

As a rising number of people use their smartphones to make purchases, cyber criminals will up their efforts, too.

According to the results of a recent survey, most cyber security experts (87 percent) now feel that as mobile payments become more popular over the next 12 months, it will also bring about a rise in the number of associated data breaches.

Equally, 42 percent of surveyed cyber security experts had also already used that transaction method this year.

The survey involved the participation of 900 experts in cyber security. It was conducted by ISACA and it suggested that mobile payments are likely to progress without any real barrier from security concerns. Among the respondents to this survey, only 23 percent said that they felt that smartphone payments were actually a safe way to store personal information. Another 47 percent said that they felt that this type of transaction is entirely unsecure. An additional 30 percent of respondents said that they were unsure as to whether or not the transactions were secure.

Regardless of the risk that is associated with security, it looks as though mobile payments are moving ahead.

Nearly 89 percent felt that cash remains the most secure way for payments transactions to be completed, today. That said, only 9 percent of the respondents said that this was their preferred method of payment.

The ISACA survey participants were asked to provide their opinions with regards to the types of vulnerabilities that could be associated with using smartphones to complete payments transactions. Among them, the mobile security concerns that were identified were:

• WiFi – 26 percent
• Loss or theft of the smartphone – 21 percent
• Shmishing (text message phishing)/phishing – 18 percent
• Weak password protection – 13 percent
• User/human error – 7 percent

The report also indicated that mobile payments based on contactless and NFC technology will be continuing their growth. As a whole, the marketplace for these transactions is predicted by Future Market Insights to be worth $2.8 trillion in five years. The cyber security experts felt that the best way to boost the security of the transactions is to use two authentication methods (66 percent) and to require a short-term authentication code (18 percent).