Hackers Steal Data, Hold Databases Hostage and Leak Video Gaming Community Profiles

In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches:

Hacker Cribs Data from Cellphone Hacking Company

A hacker has pilfered data from a company that specializes in cellphone hacking.

Taken partly from company servers, the stolen information—about 900 gigabytes worth—from Cellebrite entails customer information, databases and technical data of the company's products, according to Motherboard.

In a statement, Cellebrite said it had "recently experienced unauthorized access to an external web server,” Motherboard reported.

Speaking with Motherboard, the hacker "expressed disdain for recent changes in surveillance legislation," but didn't reveal many details about the breach.

“I can't say too much about what has been done,” the hacker told Motherboard.

Cellebrite is an Israeli company, with Japan-based Sun Corporation as the parent company.

Criminals Increasingly Hold Internet-Facing Databases Hostage

Security researchers report a massive surge in hackers seizing the data in internet-facing MongoDB databases and holding data for ransom.

Researchers Victor Gerves and Niall Merrigan noticed these ransomware attacks have increased from 200 or so two weeks ago to 28,000 Monday—and dozens of hackers are fighting among themselves to steal databases, Threatpost reported. Some of the paying victims haven’t gotten back their data, either.

These attacks don’t require malware, just poorly configured systems such as those that kept default settings. Hackers identify potential targets using Shodan, a search engine that identifies internet-connected devices.

"Cybercriminals are entrepreneurs at heart. There are tons of open unauthenticated data stores on the internet and where there is a will there is a way. Where there is money to be made cybercriminals will find a way to make it," Bugcrowd CEO Casey Ellis told Dark Reading.

1.5M E-Sports Video Game Community Profiles Leaked

More than 1.5 million player profiles from the competitive video gaming community E-Sports Entertainment Association have been leaked, according to reports.

E-Sport Entertainment Association acknowledged a data breach Dec. 27. The site uses bcrypt to secure passwords, but the security advisory lists other possible information that could have been compromised, including the usernames, emails, private messages, IPs and mobile phone numbers.

Data breach notification site LeakedSource Jan. 7 said it received 1.5 million ESEA records that hold more than 90 fields of information per profile including gamers’ identification numbers for the Steam, Xbox and PlayStation Network platforms. A LeakedSource spokesperson told CSO the breach was part of a failed ransom scheme in which the hacker demanded $50,000 to keep quiet.

ESEA security advisory makes no mention of such an attempt, though it advised users to changes passwords and security question answers, review accounts for suspicious activity and be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for personal information.

“Recently, news has been made that ESEA’s user data has been leaked online,” the company tweeted Jan. 8. “We expected something like this could happen, but have not confirmed this is ESEA’s data. We notified the community on December 30th, 2016 about the possibility this could happen.”