13/04/2021: Cybersecurity & Tech News Roundup

A supply chain cyber-attack leads to empty shelves in a popular Netherlands supermarket

The case of Albert Heijn - the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands - goes to show that cyber-criminals don't have to directly attack you to cause serious problems for your business. In this instance, hackers actually targeted Bakker Logistiek - one of the supermarket's key suppliers. This triggered a knock-on effect that left shoppers without packaged cheese and other essential cooking ingredients. Not only did this inconvenience customers, but it also caused serious reputational damage for the supermarket, which is pretty unfortunate considering the cyber-attack had nothing to do with them.

The thing is, though, that it did have something to do with them. This situation perfectly illustrates how an attack on your suppliers is also an attack on you, so ensuring your supply chain is secure is just as important as fortifying your own business. Supply chain attacks are nothing new, but it's important to recognise supply chain security vulnerabilities and then work to correct them.

Find more about this story here, and if you'd like more info on securing your business against a supply chain attack, check out this blog.

The FBI have arrested a man who attempted to blow up the internet

Seth Pendley was recently arrested and charged with attempting to destroy a building with an explosive. The building in question - an Amazon data centre. His goal was to damage Amazon's web server network, something he thought would kill off "about 70% of the internet." While AWS does play a pretty big role as part of the internet, particularly hosting and processing the data behind many well known websites and popular online services, it's obviously not 70% of the internet. Outages at an Amazon data centre could knock some services offline for a few hours, but definitely wouldn't cause the end of the internet as we know it. Read more here.

ParkMobile has suffered a serious data breach

ParkMobile is a mobile application that's popular with drivers across North America. The mobile app was unlucky enough to suffer a data breach that led to account info belonging to over 21 million customers being put up for sale online. This information includes customer names, email addresses, passwords, DoBs, licence plate numbers, phone numbers, and addresses.

The company released a statement, detailing that the incident was linked to a vulnerability in third-party software that they use. They've since launched an investigation, found and patched up the issue, and informed law enforcement. They added: “our investigation indicates that no sensitive data or Payment Card Information, which we encrypt, was affected. Meanwhile, we have taken additional precautionary steps since learning of the incident, including eliminating the third-party vulnerability, maintaining our security, and continuing to monitor our systems.” Read more here.

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