CFC Cyber Bulletin

Big Brother isn't watching you - or is he?

“I know everything.” Inspector Clouseau once stated to a roomful of suspects. “And I know nothing.” The great French detective may seem an unlikely inspiration for the world’s largest tech company, but Apple claims to have found a solution to the anomaly of gathering information about its client base without compromising their privacy. The answer, according to Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, is "Differential Privacy". This innovation aims to keep each individual user’s private information indeed private, whilst still gathering ever more data on users as a whole. 

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Democrats hacked by Russian bears

If you haven't year heard about this you may be living under a rock... or simply not in the US. Hundreds of files, including confidential political research produced by the Democratic Party, continue to be leaked after the recent hack attack on the party. US security firm Crowdstrike had revealed that two groups of Russian hackers were implicated in the break-in targeting the Democratic National Congress’s computer network - stealing research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The hackers, dubbed Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, seem to have worked independently and used different entry techniques. 

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Poor security allows massive Canadian hack

Hackers have stolen information relating to around 45 million accounts from VerticalScope, a Canadian media company. They have breached over one thousand support forums and online community websites on home, tech and sports - leaving millions of users' records exposed. Most of the forums affected by the hack were found to have poor security, including weak password encryption. 

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Crooks take off with travel agency’s customer details

A leading Japanese travel agency fears that cyber criminals may have stolen the personal details of nearly 8 million of their customers - including names, home and email addresses and, most worryingly, passport numbers. Using a common phishing scam, the hackers used a targeted email attack to access the agency’s systems. Japan has been recording a steep rise in cyber attacks over the past year. 

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