Government Source Code Leaks Compromise the Personal Data of Millions
It’s not always security researchers who uncover major data breaches or security mishaps. Reporters from a Brazilian publication have been very good lately at detecting unfortunate incidents generated by official government websites or careless government employees. It appears that for about six months, a database which has been gathering personal information for about 30 years, […]
When Private Photos Don’t Stay Private for Long
It has always been a challenge to securely share photos, videos and messages on the internet. Few applications offer a ‘trust no one’ mode where the shared content benefits from end-to-end encryption, making it nearly impossible to snoop on. In privacy wars, Apple has a proven track record of providing a much more secure environment […]
How Do Company Secrets Get Leaked Online?
Back in 2017, Facebook suffered a source code leak, initially believed to have been the result of either a developer intentionally leaking it or a security loophole in company servers. The source code leak gave away critical information about the application’s structure and development practices, which ultimately raised some serious data privacy concerns. Once the […]
Hacker Contracts: The Economy Behind Illicit Markets
Malicious actors often rely on each other to launch attacks. A carding ring that was recently dismantled by Russian authorities, for example, led to the arrest of 25 individuals who were working together. Browsing through a popular hacker forum, one can come across hundreds, if not thousands, of advertisements for different hacking tools and services. […]
The Winners and Losers of the Empire Market Shutdown
Updated: November 26th, 2021As the article below is a bit out of date, here’s a breakdown of most of the large changes in the dark web marketplace scene: Empire Market exit scammed in August 2020 DarkMarket was sized in January 2021 Yellow Brick exited a few days after DarkMarket BigBlue was seized by Interpol in April […]
Why all the Spam? How Phishing Emails Get to You
A phishing attack is any communication (email, SMS, instant messaging) campaign launched by a malicious actor to steal personal data and credentials. Phishing attacks are one of the biggest threats to data security. According to a Microsoft report, the frequency of phishing attacks grew by 250% between 2018 and 2019. Phishing has now supplanted malware […]
Ransomware and Supply Chains
Ransomware is a growing threat to any organization, government or business. In Canada alone, it is estimated that ransomware attacks and the associated downtime cost our economy CAD$2.4 billion in 2020. HOW RANSOMWARE ATTACKS WORK Spread as malware through emails and insecure download links, ransomware programs embed themselves in the computer systems of firms. Ransomware […]
Credential Stuffing Attacks And CRA
The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) is an essential part of the Canadian Federal Government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With an estimated cost of over $71 billion dollars and limited vetting of applicants, the CERB program has been known to be vulnerable to fraud since launch. Since the program’s launch, media outlets have reported that between 200,000 […]
5 Trends in Loyalty Program Fraud in Canada
Loyalty programs have grown tremendously in the last decade. Memberships rose to 3.8 billion members recently , with a total value of USD$323 billion for the ecosystem. Loyalty program fraud has significantly increased as well, increasing by 89% in the first quarter of 2019 alone. We previously explored how loyalty program fraud happens. To […]
How Loyalty Program Fraud Happens
Loyalty programs have grown tremendously in the last decade. Memberships rose from 2.6 billion to 3.8 billion from 2012 to 2016, and are projected to increase to 5.5 billion by the end of the year. The total value of all loyalty program points was estimated at USD$48 billion in 2017 (Wise Marketer, 2017). This rapid […]
