Author: Asad Yaseen

Credit card firm Mastercard has unveiled new quantum-resistant standards that are designed to enhance the security and privacy of contactless payments. As a result of the move, Mastercard will become the first payments network to bring quantum-era security and privacy to contactless payments. The Enhanced Contactless (Ecos) specifications have been introduced following a surge in contactless payments over the past year, fuelled by the desire for more hygienic payment methods in-store as a result of…

Researchers have discovered a vulnerability in TikTok which could have allowed attackers to harvest users’ phone numbers and personal profile details. Check Point revealed today that the flaw, which has now been fixed by the popular social network, was found in the app’s “Find Friends” feature. The problem stems from the fact that TikTok allows users to sync their phone contacts with the app, thus connecting user profiles with phone numbers. If exploited, the flaw…

Over 320,000 court records belonging to the second most populous county in the US have been discovered sitting on a misconfigured online database. Security researcher Jeremiah Fowler and a team from Website Planet soon found that the data was all from Cook County, Illinois, which is home to America’s third-largest city, Chicago. “There have been several high -profile data exposures of private companies that affected Cook County residents in the past few years including a…

Tens of thousands of users have had their personal details exposed after a popular online gaming site misconfigured the Elasticsearch server they were sitting on. A research team at WizCase found the wide-open server, with zero encryption and no password protection, through a simple search. It was traced back to VIPGames.com, a popular free-to-play card and board game platform with 100,000 Google Play downloads and roughly 20,000 active daily players globally. The site features games…

In 2020, we recorded 1,120 breaches and cyber attacks that were reported on in mainstream media, which accounted for 20,120,074,547 leaked records. Compiling this information enables us to see how security incidents occur and the trends to look out for. Did you know, for example, that the number of disclosed incidents shot up in the second half of the year, showing the impact that COVID-19 has had on organisations? Or that there was a 50%…

Is your system 100% ready to face the severest cyber-attack and mitigate the risk of a possible data breach? If you are unsure about your cyber-safety structure, then it’s time to upgrade it. Otherwise, you could be at risk of lengthy legal battles that result in hefty fines. Beyond that, the cost in terms of reputational loss could be catastrophic if not handled meticulously by professionals within a reasonable time. Despite the best cybersecurity practices,…