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Data security is being talked about more than ever these days, but despite a lot of attention and investment in security, breaches continue to happen. The latest data breaches affecting some of the most popular applications highlight the need for constant attention to data security and building more resilient systems to protect it.
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What is a data breach?
According to the European Commission, a data breach occurs when the data for which your company/organisation is responsible is affected by a security incident that results in a breach of confidentiality, availability or integrity. If this happens and the breach is likely to pose a risk to an individual's rights and freedoms, your company/organisation must notify the supervisory authority without undue delay and at the latest within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach. If your company/organisation is a data processor, it must notify the data controller of any data breach.
If the data breach poses a high risk to the individuals concerned, all of them must also be informed, unless effective technical and organisational safeguards or other measures are in place to ensure that the risk is no longer likely to occur in practice.
The biggest data breach of all time
Your personal data could be at risk after cyber security experts discovered potentially the biggest data breach of all time.
The huge data breach involved 26 billion records.
Bob Dyachenko - the owner of SecurityDiscovery.com and Cybernews are credited with the shocking discovery, reports The Sun.
Cybernews describes it as a "supermassive leak" and the "mother of all breaches" or MOAB for short. It involves data from popular apps including Twitter, Weibo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, JD.com and more. Researchers believe this is the largest data leak ever discovered. They discovered the stolen records on an unsecured website.
It is believed that the culprit of the breach may never be discovered, but could trigger a wave of cybercrimes.
The researchers said the dataset is extremely dangerous because threat actors could use the aggregated data for a wide range of attacks, including identity theft, sophisticated phishing schemes, targeted cyberattacks and unauthorised access to personal and sensitive accounts.
Cybernews suggests that the person storing this data may be a "malicious entity, a data processor, or some service that handles large amounts of data."
Although 26 billion stolen data records have been discovered, it is possible that some of them are repeating. The data is not described in detail, but is said to be sensitive and valuable to cyber criminals.
Chinese instant messaging app Tencent QQ was the most affected with a total of 1.4 billion stolen records, according to the researchers.
The leaks are also said to include data from various government organisations in the US, Brazil, Germany, the Philippines and Turkey, as well as other countries. Experts say the implications could be unprecedented.
Why shouldn't you use the same passwords for different accounts?
Researchers warn that if users use the same passwords for their Netflix account as they do for their Gmail account, attackers could use this to target other, more sensitive accounts. Additionally, users whose data has been included in MOAB could fall victim to phishing attacks or receive a large amount of spam emails."
The best thing you can do if you're worried about your data is to change your passwords for important accounts.
Learn how to create secure passwords.
Be careful if you find suspicious activity on your social media or banking apps and beware of phishing emails.
Source: https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/major-data-breach-affecting-popular-apps-twitter-linkedin-adobe-and-myspace/news-story/69083567a519d56429b7c175ee320b47
