Cybersecurity roundup: April 29 to May 5, 2018

Cambridge Analytica is closing its doors, while Facebook is booting out a reported stalker in its ranks.

Meanwhile, Twitter is urging users to change their passwords to be on the safe side following an unintentional unmasking of the user passwords.

These stories and more are available on this week’s Cybersecurity Roundup! 

Cambridge Analytica to close following Facebook data privacy scandal

Cambridge Analytica, the British marketing analytics firm, announced on Wednesday, May 2, it was closing and would file for insolvency in Britain and the United States after failing to recover from the Facebook data scandal.

The Financial Times meanwhile reported Cambridge Analytica could simply be licking its wounds for its eventual return under a different name: Emerdata. Both Emerdata and Cambridge Analytica appear to have the same registered address and the same directors.

Abbott recalls 465,000 pacemakers so they can get cybersecurity patches

Medical device maker Abbott is recalling some 465,000 pacemakers – from the brands Accent, Accent MRI, Accent ST, Allure, Anthem and Assurity – in order to give the pacemakers cybersecurity patches and address security vulnerabilities. 

The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to modify the devices’ pacing commands or cause premature battery depletion. The information on the vulnerabilities came out in a 2016 report. Abbott adds the updates are low-risk and should take about 3 minutes to patch, with the the devices operatingon a backup mode that keeps pacing at 67 beats per minute.

Twitter urges password changes due to unintentional password unmasking

Twitter urged its more than 300 million users to change their passwords earlier this week, saying they had been unintentionally “unmasked” inside the company by a software bug. While it found no sign that hackers accessed the exposed data, Twitter still advised users to change their passwords to be safe.

Twitter practice is to store passwords encrypted, or “hashed,” so they are masked to even people inside the company, Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal explained in a blog post. “Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process,” he said.

Facebook fires employee who used company resources for stalking

Facebook on Wednesday, May 2, fired an employee following a security researcher’s claims that the employee used company resources and the access granted by his position to stalk women online.

The stalking accusations came from Jackie Stokes, the founder of security firm Spyglass Security, in a tweet she wrote on Monday, April 30. – Rappler.com