Twitter won't reset passwords. Orange SA hit with Nefilim ransomware. TikTok's harvested data. COVID-19 research and patient data.

Summary

By the CyberWire staff

At a glance.

Twitter: no passwords exposed in Wednesday's hack.
French telco Orange hit with Nefilim ransomware.
Persistent concerns about TikTok data harvesting.
Privacy issues surrounding COVID-19 research hacking.

Twitter says no passwords were lost in Wednesday's hack.

It's early to be sure, but so far Twitter is confident enough that no passwords were compromised in Wednesday's account hijacking and Bitcoin scam incident that the social network doesn't plan to force a password reset. ZDNet reports that the incident still looks like the social engineering attack it was initially taken to be.

Orange SA hit with Nefilim ransomware.

Criminals using Nefilim ransomware have hit French telecom company Orange SA, ITWire reports. BleepingComputer confirmed with Orange that indeed the company, specifically Orange Business Services had been attacked. Data from some twenty enterprise customers were affected. Much of the information at risk represents intellectual property and business-sensitive data, but the possibility that personal data were lost can't be discounted.

Concerns about TikTok's data harvesting persist.

Social networks and search engines that depend upon advertising for their revenue all collect a great deal of data on their users. In this respect TikTok is little different from its peers. But the Economic Times argues that the platform has drawn more wary scrutiny than the others because of its Chinese ownership, and because of concerns that Chinese security and intelligence agencies can at least in principle gain access to whatever data TikTok has harvested.

Espionage and the privacy penalty it extracts.

Bloomberg interviewed a Darktrace co-founder who says that Cozy Bear's hack of COVID-19 biomedical research put patient data as well as intellectual property at risk. The research inevitably involves underlying patient data. Darktrace thinks that collecting such data can drive AI modelling that would accelerate vaccine development. A problem they see is the risk of patients losing confidence that their health data would be protected, and that this might even discourage people from, for example, going to get tested.

Selected Reading

Patient Data May Be Vulnerable in Cozy Bear Attack: Cybersecurity Expert (Bloomberg) Nicole Eagan, chief strategy officer and co-founder at Darktrace, discusses Cozy Bear, the hacking group tied to the Russian government which infiltrated organizations involved in developing a vaccine for Covid-19, according to the U.K. and U.S. cybersecurity agencies.

Twitter says about 130 accounts were targeted in cyber attack this week (Fox Business) The FBI's San Francisco division is leading an inquiry into the Twitter hacking

Twitter: No evidence hackers accessed user passwords (ZDNet) Social network has no plans to reset user passwords after yesterday's massive hack that spread a Bitcoin scam on the platform.

TikTok’s huge data harvesting prompts security concerns (The Economic Times) TikTok starts collecting data the minute you download the app. It tracks the websites youre browsing and how you type, down to keystroke rhythms and patterns, according to the companys privacy policies and terms of service. The app warns users it has full access to photos, videos and contact information of friends stored in the devices address book, unless you revoke those permissions.

Orange confirms ransomware attack exposing business customers' data (BleepingComputer) Orange has confirmed to BleepingComputer that they suffered a ransomware attack exposing the data of twenty of their enterprise customers.

iTWire - Two for two: Nefilim gang claims hit on subsidiary of France's Orange SA (ITWire) Attackers have used the Nefilim ransomware, that can encrypt files on Windows systems, to attack a subsidiary of Orange SA, formerly France Télécom SA, a French multinational telecommunications corporation and posted a note indicating that the attack has taken place. It has 266 million customers wor...

Cloud provider stopped ransomware attack but had to pay ransom demand anyway (ZDNet) BlackBaud said it had to pay a ransom demand to ensure hackers would delete data they stole from its network.