Major information disclosures are taking a toll in Singapore and around the region

It has become increasingly obvious that a worrying trend has emerged – security compromises are happening at an alarming rate.

We recently covered a whole list of vulnerabilities and happenings that centered around Zoom. Just a few days ago, The Straits Times, among many global publications, reported that Zoom login credentials / passwords have been put up on sale. With the increase in usage and dependency of business users on Zoom due to the Covid-19 crisis, many Singaporean accounts have likely been included in this compromise.

Hackers were advertising more than half a million login information for sale at about 2 Singapore cents each. They were discovered and purchased by the Cybersecurity intelligence company Cyble for analysis.

This comes hot on the heels of Kaspersky Security Networks (KSN) releasing a report in early March that claims it managed to track down 4.66 million cyber threats originating from Singapore in 2019. It also stated that 7.24 million local incidents (malware spread) were detected, as compared to 6.75 million in 2018, which represents a 7.26% jump.

Zoom was not the only victim of mass information disclosure of late. On 3rd May, a hacker managed to sell 91 million Tokopedia account login credentials. Tokopedia is the largest online store in Indonesia, employing at least 4,700 employees and 91 million active customers. The most shocking news is that the hacker is selling the data at only US$5,000.

Hackers have begun to crack the hashed passwords found in the data breach and to offer them for sale separately. So far, 15 million accounts with decrypted passwords are being sold for just US$8,000.

The last instance we’re highlighting today is from the popular domain registrar GoDaddy, which confirmed a data breach and filed a disclosure notification email sample. Originally, it was thought that 19 million accounts were compromised. GoDaddy later confirmed that a total of 28,000 accounts were impacted and that their account passwords were proactively reset to mitigate the damage.

Given the shift in culture towards home-based work and the lack of experience, controls and training, we are expecting more human slip-ups and errors, leading to more security compromises in the coming future. Information is more important now than ever.