Author: rescue@crimefire.in

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More than £4bn was stolen by fraudsters and cyber criminals in the UK through 2022 after a huge increase from the previous year.
According to a major report from money.co.uk, this represented a 63% increase in losses compared to 2021, when £2.4bn was stolen.
In its 2022 Fraud and cybercrime report, the online financial service comparison website revealed that criminals are stealing larger sums of money in each fraud, resulting in a greater average loss per fraud (£11,000) despite fewer reported cyber crimes – more than 350,500 frauds or cyber crimes were reported in 2022, representing 21% fewer than the previous year. 
Online shopping was the single biggest source of fraudulent activity in terms of the number of cases, with 67,300 reported online shopping fraud cases last year, with £103m stolen.
Cyber crime is continuing to in crease at a rapid rate as fraudsters find new opportunities in the digital world.
“Cyber crime has been dominating the headlines over the past two years as fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated in their attacks. Successful criminals are stealing hundreds of thousands of pounds from just a single intrusion in some cases,” said the report summary.
In the final three-month period of last year, when £917m was stolen, banking fraud was responsible for the biggest losses with nearly £290m taken. Banking fraud could be set to increase significantly over the coming years,
James Andrews, senior personal finance expert at money.co.uk, said: “Making sure you have up to date antivirus software on your computer, phone and tablet can help to protect yourself from cyber attacks.” 
He added: “As a rule of thumb, banks and other official bodies will never request details such as credit card numbers or other personal information over the phone or email. If you do find yourself in a position where you have unexpectedly lost money, it is important that your bank is made aware of this as soon as possible.”
Fraudsters are increasingly avoiding the cyber security systems of banks through Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, which sees criminals use fake websites and emails to trick consumers into authorising payments to them.
According to a recent report produced by supplier of payments software ACI Worldwide and analytics firm GlobalData, APP fraud (also known as bank transfer fraud) caused losses to UK citizens worth $789.4m in 2021, and could to rise to $1.56bn by 2026.
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Registration of cyber offences, including online frauds under the pretext of offering jobs, gifts etc and payment of electricity bills, rose by 63.7 per cent to 4,718 in 2022 compared to 2,883 cases in 2021, according to the Mumbai Crime Report. However, the detection of cases remains poor.
The cyber crime cases in 2022 rose by 112 per cent compared to 2,225 cases registered during the pre-COVID period in 2019. As far as detection is concerned for the 2019-2022 period, 1,292 cases were solved, including 346 in 2022, out of the 12,261 registered cases, the report said.
Post the COVID pandemic, crimes such as part-time job fraud, cheating in the name of cryptocurrency investment, insurance fraud, sextortion, and electricity bill fraud have risen, as per the report released on Tuesday.
In 2022, a total of 2,170 cheating cases, including frauds like customs, gift, purchase, job, insurance, etc, were registered. Of these cases, 92 crimes were solved. In 2021, 1,154 such cases were registered and 140 detected, it said. Cases like putting up fake social media profiles and morphing emails or SMSes rose to 400 in 2022 compared to 118 in 2021.
A total of 1,318 cases of credit and debit card fraud were reported in 2022 as against 1,075 in 2021. Other cyber crimes include phishing or spoofing of mail, electricity bill fraud, hacking, pornography, data theft, sextortion, communal posts etc.
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Cyber-crime gangs have had a 40% drop in earnings as victims are refusing to pay ransoms, researchers say.
Cryptocurrency experts at Chainalysis say ransomware groups extorted at least $457m (£370m) from victims in 2022 – $311m less than the year before.
The true figures are likely to be higher, but experts agree that fewer victims are paying.
However, while there has been a drop in criminal revenue, the number of attacks is rising.
Companies, governments, schools and even hospitals around the world are regularly falling victim to ransomware hackers, who lock staff out of their IT systems until a ransom is paid, usually in Bitcoin.
The hackers often threaten to publish or sell stolen data too.
Recent high-profile victims include The Guardian newspaper, the Royal Mail delivery company and Sick Kids Canadian children's hospital.
Many ransomware crews are thought to be based in Russia, although Russian officials deny the country is a haven for the groups.
Analysts at Chainalysis track the money flowing in and out of Bitcoin wallets which are known to be owned by ransomware crews.
Researchers say the criminal proceeds will be much higher than those they can see, because the hackers are likely to use other wallets too.
Nonetheless, the company says, the trend is clear: ransomware payments are significantly down.
Bill Siegel, of Coveware, which specialises in negotiating with hackers, agrees.
His clients are becoming increasingly reluctant to give in to hackers, who can demand millions of dollars.
In 2022, 41% of his clients paid ransoms compared with 70% in 2020, he says.
No governments have made it illegal to pay hacker ransoms, but Mr Siegel and other cyber-experts think that US sanctions against hacker groups, or those with links to Russia's Federal Security Service, have made paying some groups legally risky.
"We refuse to pay ransoms if there's even a hint of connection to a sanctioned entity," Mr Seigel said.
Other factors may also be at play, including an increase in ransomware awareness leading to improved cyber-security at organisations.
"Hackers are definitely finding it harder to get paid for ransomware attacks," said Brett Callow, threat researcher at cyber-security company Emsisoft.
Companies have become better at protecting their back-ups, reducing their need to pay hackers for recovery, he added.
"Additionally, as ransomware attacks have become so common, they are less of a PR disaster for companies, making them less likely to pay to keep incidents quiet and out of the news."
Despite the drop in revenue, the number of unique ransomware strains being used in attacks reportedly increased dramatically in 2022.
Research from cyber-security firm Fortinet found that more than 10,000 unique types of the malicious software were active in the first half of 2022.
The growth in the number of attacks last year could be connected with enforcement actions, mainly by the US authorities, which caused some of the largest ransomware groups to disband.
In November 2021, alleged members of the REvil gang were arrested around the world in a global police operation, with more than $6m in cryptocurrency retrieved by US authorities in a so-called "claw back" hacking operation.
It followed a similar operation by the US in June 2021 that took the Darkside gang offline and recovered $4.1m in stolen funds.
It is thought that these actions may have forced criminals to work in smaller groups and also knocked the confidence of gangs.
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Watch: What is ransomware and how does it work?
Criminals now seem to be carrying out a greater number of smaller attacks instead of going after large Western targets – so-called "big-game hunting" – where large payments are more likely.
"While big-game hunting may have gotten more challenging, it is still rewarding," said Jackie Burns Koven, head of cyber-threat intelligence at Chainalysis.
She warns ransomware is still extremely profitable and smaller-sized organisations should be even more vigilant as hackers spread their net wider in an effort to be paid.
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By Microsoft Security |
When you have comprehensive security, the future is yours to build. Learn about the strategies and solutions to secure your vision from Microsoft Security experts.
By Microsoft Security
Microsoft has worked to illuminate the evolving digital threat landscape with in-depth security reports for more than 15 years. Our mission first began with the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, which ran from 2005 to 2018. It has since evolved into the Microsoft Digital Defense Report, which was first released in 2020. This latest edition explores the most pressing cyber threats while also providing insight and guidance on how organizations can strengthen their cyber defenses.
Comprised of insights from 43 trillion daily security signals, the Microsoft Digital Defense Report aggregates security data from a broad spectrum of organizations and consumers across the cloud, endpoints, and the intelligent edge. The result is a high-level picture of the threat landscape and the current state of cybersecurity, including indicators that help us predict what attackers will do next.
We’ll be breaking down the Microsoft Digital Defense Report into five digestible parts with one article for each section of the report: cybercrime, nation-state threats, devices and infrastructure, cyber-influence operations, and cyber resiliency. For this first installation, we’ll be covering section one: The State of Cybercrime. Keep reading for an overview of our findings, and click here to access the full report.
Current events lead to more targeted cyber attacks
It’s no secret that cybercrime is on the rise. In large part, this is driven by dramatic increases in both random and targeted attacks. Take, for example, the evolution of cyberattack methods and criminal infrastructure that was used to augment the kinetic war during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Microsoft observed threat actors using current events such as Russia’s war on Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic to create hyper-realistic, targeted phishing attacks. These attacks use recent news stories to entice consumers to click on malicious links or provide sensitive information that would then enable attackers to gain access to internal networks.
Similarly, 2022 also saw a rise in hacktivism, with private citizens conducting cyberattacks to further social or political goals. Thousands of individuals were mobilized to launch attacks as part of the Russia-Ukraine war. While it remains to be seen whether this trend will continue, the technology industry must come together to design a comprehensive response to this new threat.
Cyber threats are diversifying as cybercrime evolves
This year also saw a significant increase in indiscriminate phishing and credential theft to gain information that is then sold and used in targeted attacks such as ransomware, data exfiltration and extortion, and business email compromise. In fact, 50% of Microsoft cybersecurity recovery engagements are related to ransomware incidents.
Ransomware attacks pose an increased risk to all individuals as critical infrastructure, businesses of all sizes, and state and local governments are targeted by criminals leveraging a growing cybercriminal ecosystem. As ransomware attacks have become more audacious in scope, their effects have become more wide-ranging. A sustainable and successful effort against this threat will require the government and private sector to work closely together to create a coordinated response plan.
When looking at organizations that were impacted by ransomware attacks, common vulnerabilities included weak identity controls, ineffective security operations, and incomplete data protection strategies. Organizations looking to shore up their defenses can start by evaluating their own security procedures to see if they contain similar weaknesses.
The CaaS economy is growing and evolving
Cybercrime as a service (CaaS) is a growing and evolving threat to customers worldwide. The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) observed continued growth of the CaaS ecosystem with an increasing number of online services facilitating cybercrimes, including business email compromise (BEC) and human-operated ransomware. In 2022 alone, Microsoft blocked 2.75 million site registrations ahead of criminal actors that planned to use them to engage in global cybercrime. CaaS sellers increasingly offer compromised credentials for purchase and we’re seeing more CaaS services and products with enhanced features to avoid detection.
Attackers are finding new ways to implement techniques and host their operational infrastructure, such as compromising businesses to host phishing campaigns and malware or using their computing power to mine cryptocurrency. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals using widespread botnets. When routers are unpatched and left exposed directly to the internet, threat actors can abuse them to gain access to networks, execute malicious attacks, and even support their operations.
While cybercrime is an ever-looming threat, there are a number of steps that security teams can take to better protect their organizations. And it starts with understanding how cybercriminals operate and where their organizational vulnerabilities lie.
Download the full Microsoft Digital Defense Report to better understand today’s cyber threat landscape and for even more details, check out our recent webinar, “Build cyber resilience by leveraging Microsoft experts’ digital defense learnings.”
Explore more threat intelligence insights on Microsoft Security Insider.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.

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Microsoft and Fortinet are among the technology companies supporting the official start of an effort to map cybercriminal activities and identify joint public and private sector responses to cyber threats.
Work on the Cybercrime Atlas will be hosted by the World Economic Forum for the next two-to-three years, it was announced today.  The two tech companies, plus PayPal and Banco Santander, will help pay for the secretariat backing the Atlas until it is sufficiently established to become an independent platform.
The announcement was made at the forum’s annual meeting in Switzerland.
The goal is to provide a platform for leading cybercrime investigators, national and international law enforcement agencies, and global businesses to share knowledge, generate policy recommendations, and identify opportunities for co-ordinated action to fight cyber threats.
First announced at the RSA Conference in San Francisco in June 2022, work on the Cybercrime Atlas has started with the analysis of 13 criminal groups by cybercrime investigators, the forum said in its statement.
“Cybercriminals work in the shadows and exploit vulnerabilities to inflict devastating attacks,” Microsoft vice-chair and president, Brad Smith, said in a statement. “The Cybercrime Atlas provides an important forum that brings the public and private sectors together to share actionable information and leverage cross-sector data, capabilities and expertise, crucial to disrupting cybercrime quickly, and at scale.”
Separately, the forum issued its annual global cybersecurity outlook, saying its research shows business leaders are more aware of their organizations’ cyber issues than they were a year ago. “Nonetheless,” the report added, “cyber leaders still struggle to clearly articulate the risk that cyber issues pose to their organizations in a language that their business counterparts fully understand and can act upon. As a result, agreeing on how best to address cyber risk remains a challenge for organizational leaders.”
Among the survey findings:
— business and cyber leaders believe global geopolitical instability is moderately or very
likely to lead to a catastrophic cyber event in the next two years;
— the character of cyber threats has changed. Respondents now believe that cyber attackers are more likely to focus on business disruption and reputational damage. These are the top two concerns among respondents;
— 43 per cent of business leaders think it is likely that, in the next two years, a cyberattack will materially affect their organization;
— the data protection and cybersecurity concerns created by geopolitical fragmentation are
increasingly influencing how businesses operate and the countries in which they invest;
— lack of skilled cyber experts is a threat to businesses and societies, with key sectors such as energy utilities reporting a 25 per cent gap in critical skills. A broad solution to increase the supply of cyber professionals is to expand and promote inclusion and diversity efforts, the report says. In addition, understanding the broad spectrum of skills needed today can help organizations to expand their hiring pools;
— cyber executives are now more likely to see data privacy laws and cybersecurity regulations as effective tools for reducing cyber risks across a sector. This is a notable shift in perception from the 2022 Outlook report, say the authors.
Cyber and business leaders still have a great deal of work to do to truly understand each other, articulate the risk cyber issues pose to their business and translate that into
meaningful management and mitigation measures, the report warns.
“As the cyber landscape promises to become more complex in the coming years, it is critical that organizations work to resolve this now if they are to build systemic cyber resilience for the long term.”
The report’s conclusions resulted from analysis of data from many sources: a survey of global organizational leaders; a workshop with the World Economic Forum’s Cybersecurity Leadership Community and Global Future Council on Cybersecurity in October 2022, as well as workshops conducted during the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting on Cybersecurity in November 2022; interviews with experts and bilateral meetings; the collection of data from reports, research and articles published by the World Economic Forum and reputable third parties; and consultations with 151 global organizational leaders.
Our experienced team of journalists and bloggers bring you engaging in-depth interviews, videos and content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives.
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Updated At: Jan 18, 2023 12:53 PM (IST)
Members of the cybercrime gang in Faridabad police custody. Tribune photo
Tribune News Service

Faridabad, January 17
The cyber cell of the police here has busted a gang that was running a racket involving financing from banks and private companies on the basis of fake Aadhaar and PAN cards. The accused are reported to be involved in 180 incidents in the region, it was claimed.
Modus operandi
Using fake Aadhaar, PAN cards, the miscreants got costly phones, LED TVs, laptops, home theatres, ACs etc financed from banks and private companies. Later, they sold those in the grey market
According to DCP Nitish Kumar, the accused — identified as Vineet, Sahil, Tikam, Deepak, Abid, Mukesh and Harmel – were arrested in a raid carried out by the police at various places recently in connection with the racket of cheating banks and customers by using fake Aadhaar and PAN cards for getting costly phones financed and selling those in the grey market.
The breakthrough came after the police launched a probe in connection with a complaint lodged by a local resident in October last year. The complainant said that when he contacted his bank for a loan, he was told that a mobile phone loan of Rs 49,000 was already running in his name.
He came to know that the loan in his name has defaulted due to non-payment of installments. As a result, his CIBIL score has gone down and he was ineligible to get more loans.
On knowing this, the victim lodged a complaint, a case was registered and investigation was launched by the cyber cell.
The DCP said Vineet, Mukesh, Abid, Tikam and Harmel are residents of Ghaziabad and accused Deepak and Sahil are residents of Delhi. The accused have revealed that they had been preparing fake documents to cheat banks and finance companies to get finance for mobile phones and other electronic items on the basis of these documents without the knowledge of the customers. The accused have been arrested from Delhi, Ghaziabad and Bihar.
Vineet was the mastermind and used to collect Aadhaar and PAN card data to pass on to Mukesh and Harmel, who made changes in the documents. Cash amount of Rs 15,000, a computer, printer, three mobile phones and 14 SIM cards have been seized. All the accused have been remanded to judicial custody.
#cyber crime #faridabad
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By Sofia Stuart Leeson | EURACTIV.com
19-01-2023
In 2019 there were 4,715 reports of cybercrime in the Netherlands; in 2022, it rose to 13,949, almost three times as many. [Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com]
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The Netherlands reported a total of 13,949 cybercrimes in 2022, which is nearly triple the amount reported in 2019.
In 2019 there were 4,715 reports of cybercrime in the Netherlands; in 2022, it rose to 13,949, almost three times as many, AD reported. In comparison, the number of burglaries, robberies, and muggings is at an all-time low.
“We see a lot of young growth there. The knowledge to commit crimes online is widely shared, and it is easy to do from home,” operational specialist René Middag at the National Unit told AD.
Middag also added that the COVID-19 pandemic played a part in this. As people were forced to stay home, they were protected from crime. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in online scams and fraud, which continue to rise.
Over the next few years, the National Cyber Security Centre, the Digital Trust Centre, and the Cyber Security Incident Response Team for digital service providers will merge into a single centre of expertise and information hub to improve the digital resilience of the Netherlands, the Dutch government published back in September.
“We need to improve our digital resilience and our ability to deflect cyber attacks,” Justice and Security Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius said in the Dutch government’s press release.
(Sofia Stuart Leeson | EURACTIV.com)
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Leading law firm ordered to pay victim of cyber crime
Court judgment has consequences for companies that invoice via email
17 January 2023 
The Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg has ordered Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs to pay R5.5 million plus punitive costs to Judith Hawarden. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
Judith Hawarden received an email from what she thought was Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs (ENS) with the details of the account into which she paid the balance of money owed on a property sale.
But the email was forged and the money stolen. Hawarden sued ENS for the money.
In finding for Hawarden, the Gauteng High Court criticised ENS for relying on email, which is insecure, for invoicing her. The case likely has profound consequences for how companies invoice clients.
ENS also had to pay punitive costs for the way it handled the case.
One of South Africa’s leading law firms has been held liable for R5.5 million which a property buyer intended to deposit in its trust account. The money was stolen as a result of fraudsters manipulating emails from an employee of the firm.
Johannesburg High Court Judge Phanuel Mudau has ruled that Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs (ENS) must pay Judith Hawarden R5.5 million, plus interest, and pay the legal costs of the lawsuit on a punitive scale.
In her arguments, Hawarden claimed that ENS owed her a duty of care, and that in corresponding with her, it also had a legal duty to warn her of the danger of “business email compromise (BEC)”, that this was on the increase and that it was already prevalent. 
She said the firm should have warned her, before she made any payment, that she should verify the account details, and it should have loaded its trust account details on online banking systems so that the account number would not have to be sent out on unprotected and unsafe emails.
ENS denied liability, claiming that Hawarden herself had been negligent in using an electronic transfer without ensuring that the bank details were correct.
The case dates back to 2019 when Harwarden put in an offer on a Forest Town property through Pam Golding Properties for R6 million.
She paid a deposit of R500,000 directly to the estate agency.
The seller appointed ENS as the conveyancing attorney.
Hawarden received an email from Eftyhia Maninakis, a secretary in the property division of the law firm, with details of what was still required in order for the sale to go through and the option of providing a bank guarantee for the outstanding amount.
What Hawarden did not know was that this email was fraudulent, that a fraudster had intercepted the genuine email and altered the firm’s bank account details.
In response to this email, Hawarden telephoned Maninakis a few days later. Maninakis confirmed that she could transfer the outstanding amount in cash directly to ENS.
Hawarden received an email from what appeared to be Maninakis’s email later that day – what she believed was a follow up to their earlier conversation.
That email contained the firm’s bank account number, as confirmed by First National Bank.
What Hawarden did not notice was that the email address was from ensafirca.com – not ensafrica.com.
Read the judgment
Judge Mudau said the emails actually sent by ENS had been intercepted and forged and the bank account details were incorrect.
Further correspondence between Hawarden and Maninakis was also intercepted by the fraudsters, including an investment mandate which contained several warnings about BEC. This was after payment had been made but before the fraud was discovered.
The money was paid into the FNB account but was transferred out and the bank was unable to retrieve the misappropriated funds.
Hawarden, who has now retired, said in her evidence during the trial that nothing in the two emails alerted her to the fact that they were fraudulent and that she knew nothing of the dangers of business email compromise.
She said after she paid the money into the fraudsters’ bank account, she received a statement of account from ENS, to make a second payment. At the foot of that account was a warning urging readers to telephonically verify the firm’s banking details, a warning which had been absent on previous communications.
In evidence, Hawarden conceded that she had, during and after her divorce, dealt with large amounts of money – and that she had heeded the BEC warning on the Pam Golding correspondence – but said she trusted ENS implicitly and “assumed they would take care of anything that was not safe”.
Hawarden called a digital forensic expert witness, Anton Van’t Wout, who prepared a video demonstration for the court showing the ease with which an email can be altered. He suggested alternative safer ways of communicating safer information.
He testified that there was no reason why ENS could not have used a secure portal.
Another witness, attorney Mark Heyink, an expert in information and communications technology law, testified that this type of cyber crime was a well-known risk.
Under cross examination he conceded that most attorneys sent invoices to clients by way of ordinary emails and PDF attachments and that his evidence reflected what ought to be done, not what actually happens.
ENS led the evidence of Maninakis who said she had not known that PDF documents could be manipulated until this incident.
She said she had not sent the initial mandate letter with the fraud warnings to Hawarden because she did not know at that stage that Hawarden was going to pay the money in cash, rather than by bank guarantee.
She also thought Hawarden was in “safe hands” because she was liaising with her own bank on the issue.
Judge Mudau said Hawarden blamed ENS for her loss because, she said, the firm should have done more to protect her and used more secure means to communicate with her. She contended that ENS was well aware of this type of fraud.
“The evidence in this case shows that BEC attacks are rife, especially in the conveyancing industry. The parties’ experts agree that BEC has been around for many years.
“ENS contends that if this court holds ENS liable, it would expose all conveyancers, big and small alike, to claims of the same kind by third parties, with whom they have no relationship, for losses they suffered at the hands of fraudsters who hacked their own email accounts.
“ENS contends that the ripple effect thereof would not only extend to all firms of attorneys but indeed to all businesses who send their invoices, with their banking details, to their clients by email which is a near universal practice for all firms.
“ENS submits that it is the responsibility of the debtor, who chooses to make an electronic payment, to ensure that it is paid into the right account,” the judge wrote.
He said while Hawarden was not a client of ENS, the firm owed her a general duty of care as a purchaser of property.
“ENS, as Hawarden contends, had control over the way its bank account details were conveyed to her. It chose to do this by way of an unprotected email attaching its bank account details as a PDF document which could be easily manipulated as the evidence clearly established.
“ENS failed to safely communicate its bank details using technical safety measures … Hawarden depended on (ENS) to act professionally.”
The judge said the fact that most businesses sent their banking details by emails did not absolve the law firm from unsafe behaviour “which it knew at the time was unsafe and knew to take precautions”.
“Viewed objectively, Hawarden cannot be faulted for placing her trust in the firm who she believed was a very large and reputable firm.
“I have no difficulty in finding that the firm’s banking details were financially sensitive information and needed to be treated as such, that the risk of BEC was foreseen by ENS….and that sending bank details by email is inherently dangerous.
“The risk of loss to Hawarden was highly foreseeable by ENS.
“The interests of society demand that a legal duty is recognised in this case,” Judge Mudau said.
Punitive cost order
The judge awarded a punitive cost order because ENS breached Hawarden’s privacy by including irrelevant documents about her divorce and other investments and business dealings in the court papers. Hawarden had made her hard drive available to ENS to conduct a forensic investigation to determine where the hacking occured. ENS breached an undertaking not to copy certain documents on her hard drive.
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More than 4,100 publicly disclosed data breaches occurred in 2022 equating to approximately 22 billion records being exposed. Cyber security publication Security Magazine reported that the figures for 2022 are expected to exceed this figure by as much as five percent.
In this article, we reveal which data breaches and leaks and the phishing, malware and cyber attacks ranked among our top ten most-read cyber security news stories of 2022.
Read on to hear about data breaches at Revolut, Twitter, Uber and Rockstar, and let us know if you were impacted by any of the incidents covered in the comment section below. 
The personal information for more than 50,000 users of fintech start-up Revolut was accessed during a data breach that took place on September 11, 2022. The breach involved a third-party gaining access to Revolut’s database and the personal information of 50,150 users. 
The data accessed included names, home and email addresses, and partial payment card information, although Revolut has stated that card details were masked.  
The Lithuanian government said that Revolut had taken “prompt action to eliminate the attacker’s access to the company’s customer data and stop the incident” once it was discovered.
Learn more about public response to the breach in this September post.
In October, Zoetop Business Company, the firm that owns fast fashion brands SHEIN and ROMWE, was fined US$1.9mn by the state of New York after failing to disclose a data breach which affected 39 million customers. 
The cyber security incident which took place in July 2018 saw a malicious third party gain unauthorized access to SHEIN’s payment systems. According to a statement issued by the state of New York’s Attorney General’s office, SHEIN’s payment processor contacted the brand and disclosed that it had been “contacted by a large credit card network and a credit card issuing bank, each of which had information indicating that [Zoetop’s] system[s] have been infiltrated and card data stolen”. 
The discovery was made after the credit card network found SHEIN customers’ payment details for sale on a hacking forum.
Read more about SHEIN’s mishandling of the breach in this October post.
A data breach on student loan servicer Nelnet Servicing caused the confidential information of more than 2.5 million users to be leaked in June 2022.  
It was concluded by the investigation on August 17, 2022, that due to a vulnerability in its system, student loan account registration information including names, home and email addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers, were accessible to an unknown third party from June until July 22, 2022.  
Following this discovery, Nelnet Servicing notified the US Department of Education and law enforcement.
Learn more about the response to the data breach in this August post.
In July 2022, a hacker that went by the alias ‘devil’ posted on hacking forum BreachForums that they had the data of 5.4 million Twitter accounts for sale.
The stolen data included email addresses and phone numbers from “celebrities, companies, randoms, OGs”. ‘OGs’ refers to Twitter handles that are either short, comprising of one or two letters, or a word that is desirable as a screen name, for example, a first name with no misspelling, numbers or punctuation. The hacker ’devil’ said they would not be accepting offers “lower than [$30,000]” for the database. 
The data breach was the result of a vulnerability on Twitter that was discovered in January 2022.
Learn more about the vulnerability that led to the data breach here.
Between September 15–19, 2022, a hacker allegedly hit both rideshare company Uber and video game company Rockstar.
On September 15, Uber’s internal servers were accessed following after a contractor’s device was infected with malware and their login details were sold on the dark web. The hacker accessed several other employee accounts, which then gave them access to a number of internal tools. The hacker then posted a message to a company-wide Slack channel and reconfigured Uber’s Open DNS to display a graphic image to employees on some internal sites.
The hack into Rockstar Games, developer of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game series, was discovered on September 19, 2022. A user called teapotuberhacker posted on Grand Theft Auto game series fan site GTAForums: “Here are 90 footage/clips from GTA 6. It’s possible I could leak more data soon, GTA 5 and 6 source code and assets, GTA 6 testing build.” 
In the post’s comments, the hacker claimed they had “downloaded [the gameplay videos] from Slack” via hacking into channel used for communicating about the game.
Rockstar Games made a statement via Twitter that said the company had suffered a “network intrusion” which had allowed an unauthorized third party to “illegally access and download confidential information form [its] systems”, including the leaked GTA 6 footage. 
Discover who orchestrated the hack and what happened to them in this September post.
On October 13, 2022, Australian healthcare and insurance provider Medibank detected some “unusual activity” on its internal systems. The company was then contacted on October 17 by the malicious party, who aimed to “negotiate with the [healthcare] company regarding their alleged removal of customer data”. However, Medibank publicly refused to bend to the hacker’s demands.
Medibank revealed the true extent of the hack on November 7, announcing that the malicious actor had gained unauthorized access to and stole the data for 9.7 million past and present customers. The information included confidential and personally identifying information on medical procedures including codes associated with diagnosis and procedures given.
Following Medibank’s continued refusal to pay a ransom, the hacker released files containing customer data called “good-list” and “naughty-list” on November 9, 2022.
The so-called “naughty-list” reportedly included details on those who had sought medical treatment for HIV, drug addiction or alcohol abuse or for mental health issues like eating disorders. 
On November 10, they posted a file labelled “abortions” to a site backed by Russian ransomware group REvil, which apparently contained information on procedures that policyholders have claimed on, including miscarriages, terminations and ectopic pregnancies.
Find a full timeline of the Medibank data leak in this November post.
On November 16, 2022, a hacker posted a dataset to BreachForums containing what they claimed to be up-to-date personal information of 487 million WhatsApp users from 84 countries.  
In the post, the alleged hacker said those who bought the datasets would receive “very recent mobile numbers” of WhatsApp users. According to the bad actor, among the 487 million records are the details for 32 million US users, 11 million UK users and six million German users. 
The hacker did not explain how such a large amount of user data had been collected, saying only that they had “used their strategy” to obtain it.
Learn more about the data breach in this November post.
Australian telecommunication company Optus suffered a devastating data breach on September 22, 2022 that has led to the details of 11 million customers being accessed. 
The information accessed included customers’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email and home addresses, driver’s license and/or passport numbers and Medicare ID numbers. 
Files containing this confidential information were posted on a hacking forum after Optus refused to pay a ransom demanded by the hacker. Victims of the breach also said that they were contacted by the supposed hacker demanding they pay AU$2,000 (US$1,300) or their data would be sold to other malicious parties.
Find out more about how the Optus data breach occurred in this September post.
Carding marketplaces are dark web sites where users trade stolen credit card details for financial fraud, usually involving large sums of money. On October 12, 2022, carding marketplace BidenCash released the details of 1.2 million credit cards for free. 
A file posted on the site contained the information on credit cards expiring between 2023 and 2026, in addition to other details needed to make online transactions.
BidenCash had previously leaked the details of thousands of credit cards in June 2022 as a way to promote the site. As the carding marketplace had been forced to launch new URLs three months later in September after suffering a series of DDoS attacks, some cyber security experts suggested this new release of details could be another attempt at advertising.  
Discover how BidenCash gained access to 1.2 million credit card details in our October coverage.
On November 23, 2022, Los Angeles-based cyber security expert Chad Loder tweeted a warning about a data breach at social media site Twitter that had allegedly affected “millions” across the US and EU. Loder claimed the data breach occurred “no earlier than 2021” and “has not been reported before”. Twitter had previously confirmed a data breach that affected millions of user accounts in July 2022, as seen in point seven of this article. 
Loder stated, however, that this “cannot” be the same breach as the one they reported on unless the company “lied” about the July breach. According to Loder, the data from the November breach is “not the same data” as that seen in the July breach, as it is in a “completely different format” and has “different affected accounts”. Loder said they believed that the breach occurred due to malicious actors exploiting the same vulnerability as the hack reported in July.
Learn more about the data breach and those impacted in this November post.

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