Information security analytics

The number of cyber attacks continues to increase globally. Hackers, either alone or in organized crime groups, try to interfere with digital assets of individuals and businesses. However, not all of them get off scot-free, with fitting punishment to follow. Here is a digest of court sentences imposed on cyber criminals, as prepared by InfoWatch.

AcFun, which operates one of China’s popular platforms to share video and animation, has been hit by a cyberattack in which “tens of millions of users’ information” were compromised, the website South China Morning Post said.

On June 7, 2018, the French Data Protection Authority (the CNIL) published a decision (issued one month earlier) in which it imposed a record 250,000 euros fine on Optical Center (which, although its name does not indicate, is a French company) for having insufficiently secured the personal data of its customers, the blog Security, Privacy and the Law reports

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined the British and Foreign Bible Society £100,000 after the charity’s IT network was compromised due to a cyber-attack in 2016, the portal Charity Digital News reports.

Facebook said it was informing 14 million users that they may have accidentally shared posts publicly because of a bug.

A Californian senator has introduced a bill to increase data breach liability. If the bill is approved by the local senate and then the Governor, people affected by a data breach will be allowed to sue for $1,000 or monetary damages–whichever sum is greater. As a result, any company failing to prevent a big data leakage may have to pay multi-million compensations.

Family genealogy and DNA testing site MyHeritage announced a security breach during which an attacker made off with account details for over 92 million MyHeritage users, the website BleepingComputer reports.

A popular fitness app that claims over six million users was leaking private and sensitive data, including health information and private messages sent between users. The app leaked also full credit card data in some cases, the portal ZDNet writes.

On May 25, 2018, the European Union (EU) gave effect to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that establishes personal data protection principles and requirements and is aimed to uphold the rights of personal data subjects. It imposes harsher punishments for a failure to comply with personal information storage and processing rules, sets global data protection standards, and regulates cross-border data transfer.

In the digital era, audio leaks reached a brand new level to become an instrument of political pressure and a weapon in business battles. This is a digest of leaks through audio channels, prepared by InfoWatch.