Computer Security News and Insights
In December 2020, SolarWinds disclosed one of the most devastating supply chain compromises in history. But buried in the early reporting was a detail that made every security professional wince: a critical password — "solarwinds123" — had been publicly accessible on GitHub. One weak, reused, laughably simple password contributed to
In December 2020, SolarWinds disclosed a supply chain compromise that shook the entire cybersecurity industry. But while the world was focused on nation-state threat actors, Verizon's 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report had already confirmed something far more common and just as devastating: over 80% of hacking-related breaches involved
The Breach That Started With "Password123" In 2020, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report confirmed what security professionals already suspected: over 80% of hacking-related breaches involved brute force or the use of lost or stolen credentials. That's not a typo. Four out of five breaches trace
In July 2020, Twitter lost control of 130 high-profile accounts — including those of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — in a social engineering attack that bypassed every technical control the company had. The attackers didn't use a zero-day exploit. They manipulated employees. And Twitter's cybersecurity incident
The SolarWinds breach discovered this month compromised at least 18,000 organizations — including multiple U.S. government agencies — and most of them had no actionable incident response plan template ready when the alerts started firing. I've watched organizations scramble through breaches with nothing but a stale PDF from
In July 2020, Garmin went dark. Their fitness trackers, aviation navigation tools, and customer support systems all went offline simultaneously. A ransomware attack attributed to the WastedLocker strain reportedly crippled the company for days. If you're wondering how to respond to a cyberattack, Garmin's very public
When SolarWinds disclosed in December 2020 that threat actors had compromised their Orion software update mechanism — affecting up to 18,000 organizations including multiple U.S. government agencies — it became the most significant supply chain attack in modern history. The organizations that responded effectively didn't improvise. They followed
The SolarWinds Hack Rewrote the Playbook — While We Were Still Reading It As I write this in December 2020, the cybersecurity world is reeling from the SolarWinds supply chain compromise — arguably the most sophisticated cyber espionage campaign ever discovered against the U.S. government and private sector. It's
In July 2020, Twitter suffered one of the most visible cyber incidents of the year — a coordinated social engineering attack that compromised high-profile accounts including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple. The attackers walked away with over $100,000 in Bitcoin. But what stood out to me wasn't
In July 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida convinced a Twitter employee to hand over internal credentials. Within hours, threat actors had hijacked 130 high-profile accounts — including those of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — and used them to run a Bitcoin scam. The breach didn't start with a
