CyberMechs

INDIA’S PM WEBSITE’S DATA AND DONORS DETAILS LEAKED ON DARKWEB

On September 3rd, 2020 Twitter confirmed that the personal Twitter account of Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, was hacked. This was followed by a series of tweets from the account asking followers to donate to the PM’s National Relief Fund via Cryptocurrency. Corresponding to similar cyber threat attacks in July on Joe Biden and Tesla founder Elon Musk, this is undoubtedly the latest high-profile Twitter security breach posing a great threat to personal privacy.

Cyble subsequently investigated the threat and noted that the breach was due to an account linked to the website of narendramodi.in. On September 3, Cyble notified CERT-India that the Twitter account was compromised through the website’s configuration (example access_token) linked with Twitter. At that point of time, Cyble wasn’t aware of the impact of the breach, however the threat actor/s may have accessed other files or potential databases.

On October 10, Cyble was tipped off that the database of the website is available in the darkweb. Subsequently, Cyble acquired and analyzed the data leak, which includes multiple databases. Cyble’s having gained exclusive access to the leaked data is a mark of the company’s solid relationship with the web community and its proven methodology for identifying, classifying, and maintaining sensitive data. Among the databases leaked, ‘cctransactions’ and ‘users’ contain a substantial amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data belonging to the Prime Minister’s followers.

There is a high possibility of the data being misused for criminal purposes as it contains personal details of over 570,000 users. This includes PIIs such as Name, Email ID, contact information, etc.

Clinical Trials Hit by Ransomware Attack on Health Tech Firm

No patients were affected, but the incident was another reminder of the risks in the increasingly common assaults on computer networks.

A Philadelphia company that sells software used in hundreds of clinical trials, including the crash effort to develop tests, treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, was hit by a ransomware attack that has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks.

The attack on eResearchTechnology, which has not previously been reported, began two weeks ago when employees discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware, an attack that holds victims’ data hostage until they pay to unlock it. ERT said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but customers said the attack forced trial researchers to track their patients with pen and paper.

Among those hit were IQVIA, the contract research organization helping manage AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine trial, and Bristol Myers Squibb, the drugmaker leading a consortium of companies to develop a quick test for the virus.

ERT has not said how many clinical trials were affected, but its software is used in drug trials across Europe, Asia and North America. It was used in three-quarters of trials that led to drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration last year, according to its website.