Computer Security News and Insights
A Single Checkbox Left 540 Million Facebook Records Exposed Back in 2019, researchers at UpGuard discovered that two third-party Facebook app developers had stored more than 540 million user records on Amazon S3 buckets with no access restrictions. Not encrypted. Not firewalled. Just sitting there, publicly readable, because someone didn&
The Threat Already Inside Your Network In 2023, Tesla disclosed that two former employees had leaked the personal data of over 75,000 workers to a foreign media outlet. It wasn't a sophisticated nation-state hack. It wasn't a zero-day exploit. It was two people with legitimate
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost roughly $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered their way past the help desk with a single phone call. The attackers didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability. They didn't write custom malware. They called an employee, pretended to be someone from IT,
The Hiring Manager Who Ignored Every Applicant's Diploma A few years ago, I sat in on a hiring panel for a mid-level SOC analyst position. The hiring manager tossed a stack of resumes on the table and said, "I don't care what school any of
A Single Click Cost One Hospital System $67 Million In 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the U.S. — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The attack disrupted claims processing for thousands of providers nationwide. UnitedHealth Group, its parent company, reported costs exceeding
The $350 Million Checkbox That Wasn't Checked When Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017, two massive data breaches — affecting all three billion Yahoo accounts — knocked $350 million off the purchase price. The breaches had happened years earlier, but inadequate cybersecurity due diligence meant the full scope wasn't
The Sticky Note That Cost a Hospital $3 Million A nurse left a sticky note with login credentials on her monitor. A visitor photographed it. Within 48 hours, a threat actor had accessed patient records for over 10,000 individuals. The resulting HIPAA settlement wasn't pretty. I'
The Virus That Cost a Hospital $65 Million In 2017, the WannaCry ransomware tore through the UK's National Health Service, locking down systems at over 80 organizations and forcing hospitals to divert ambulances. The estimated cost exceeded £92 million. The root cause? Unpatched Windows machines running a known
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered a help desk employee with a ten-minute phone call. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability. They exploited a gap in employee policy — specifically, the identity verification process for password resets. A strong cybersecurity
In January 2024, security researchers at Checkmarx uncovered a massive man in the middle attack campaign targeting the Python Package Index (PyPI), where threat actors intercepted developer credentials and injected malicious code into software supply chains. The attack went undetected for months. This wasn't some exotic nation-state operation
