The year of 2017 has been and gone, but we can take the time to reflect on mistakes and ensure they don’t happen again.
Cyber-crime continues to increase over the years with online fraud and cyber-crime costing the UK an estimate of over £11bn in 2016. 2017 was no different, with cyber-crimes taking place throughout the year. Here are just some of the attacks that stood out;
London Bridge Plastic Surgery Firm
Towards the end of 2017, a hacker group compromised a plastic surgery business based in London. They threatened to release client photos and information, stating that they had access to data for high profile celebrities. Supposedly, the photos included unspecified members of the royal family.
When the distressing event took place, the London based firm took measures to block the attack and contacted police immediately.
The Hacker Forum
Basetools.ws, which is an ‘underground’ hacking community, was threatened with exposure of all the users on the website. The individual behind the attack claimed to have details of transactions between users exchanging stolen bank card details, profile data and spamming tools.
The owner of the website was not left out, with the hacker acquiring information about him, which could see him and many others facing jail time.
The attacker wanted $50,000 to prevent him from sharing the information.
In this case, people may not sympathise with the victims of this cyber-crime, as they themselves have participated in a similar crime.
Debenhams
Debenhams sells own-brand and international fashion, beauty and homeware products.
Early 2017, Debenhams encountered an attack on their online florist website, DebenhamsFlowers.com. The attackers gained personal information of 26,000 customers including names, addresses and financial information.
Debenhams had outsourced the operation of their website to e-commerce company, Ecomnova. According to Debenhams, the attackers had access to the systems for more than six weeks – undetected the whole time.
Ecomnova had responsibility for four online stores associated to Debenhams, including their hampers, personalised gifts and wine stores. Upon the discovery of the breach, Debenhams suspended the sites.
Wonga
Wonga, a British payday loan company, was also the victim of an attack during 2017.
Around 245,000 customers were affected by the cyber-attack, with the hackers obtaining important information such as bank details. The stolen data included names, addresses, bank account numbers and sort codes. Not only that, targeted information was said to possibly include the last 4 digits of user’s bank cards. This was an issue for some customers, as the last four numbers are used as a form of verification for some banks offering online banking.
