Hacker threat 1: Organised Crime: Case of LinkedIn Attack

Cyber security can be referred to as collective processes, technologies, and methods to protect the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of computer networks, data, and systems against unauthorised access and cyber attack. Thus, this study aims to provide significance of cyber security by highlighting three specific hacker threat types such as organised crime, hacktivists, and espionage respectively. In order to underline the selected types of hacker threats, three related company case examples such as LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Cambridge Analytica that had witnessed cyber-attack issues will be investigated. Other than this, factors that can be considered to prevent identified threat attacks will also be highlighted in the following section briefly.

Cyber attacks are found to be unwelcome incidents of attempts to alter, expose, steal, destroy, or disable information for financial or personal gains by unauthorised access to the computer system. Organised cyber attack is found to be associated with different types of cybercrimes such as malware distribution and creation, hacking, fraud, blackmail, and others (Huang et al., 2018). In this regard, the case scenario of a LinkedIn cyber attack can be considered as organised cybercrime. The reason behind stating this statement is that LinkedIn is found to utilise old security policy even after knowing that emphasising upon old security policy provides opportunities for hackers to crack confidential data easily. Due to this reason, LinkedIn failed to protect about 117 million passwords and emails of LinkedIn members, which were stolen by the hackers (Pagliery, 2016).

It is identified that hackers accessed the network of LinkedIn illegally and accessed about 6.5 million users’ encrypted passwords as well as posted that data in the hacker’s forum of Russia. The primary motivation behind this cyber attack was associated with financial gain as the hacker tried to sell 117 million members’ passwords and email on the dark web, an illegal marketplace for an amount of $2,200 (Perez, 2016).

Improper security measures and policy implementation can be considered as one of the major vulnerabilities that had led to the occurrences of a data breach across the LinkedIn network (Pagliery, 2016). It is identified that the company was utilising an old version of security policy that provides opportunities to hackers to crack passwords or confidential information easily. On the other hand, LinkedIn protects users’ passwords through encryption; however, they failed to include pivotal security layers and stored those users’ passwords in “unsalted SHA-1 hashes”, which enhanced the chance for hackers to crack them easily (Perez, 2016).  

Hacker threat 2: Hacktivists: Case of Cambridge Analytica

Improper handling of users’ data leads to the occurrences of long-term and short-term impacts for organisations. Considering the case of LinkedIn, the short-term impact is being identified in the form of raising awareness among users regarding data and privacy security. On the other hand, the long-term impact has been observed in the form of declining organisational reputation, and market position.

In response to the mentioned data breach, LinkedIn tried to reach out to the affected members and advise every member to change their passwords. Along with this, the company mentioned that they had increased their security measure and added “two-factor authentication” to store users’ data within a strongly encrypted environment (Perez, 2016).

The proliferation of technology improvises businesses activities in a modernised way and on the other hand, it generates a number of cyber security risks or cyber attacks that negatively influence upon organisational ongoing and future performance. Hacktivists are considered as the types of cyber threats that involve specific cybercriminal groups to carry out specific cyber-attacks for political purposes. In order to underline the aspect of hacktivists’ cyber threats, the case of Cambridge Analytica can be interlinked as the company obtained access to 50 million users in Facebook illegally during Trump’s election campaigning during the financial year 2016 (Granville, 2018).

The major motivation of the mentioned cyber attack was to understand and manipulate the perspective of American voters to generate the election outcome in the favour of President Trump. It is identified that Cambridge Analytica was being hired by President Trump in order to obtain information regarding 50 million users in Facebook illegally in order to understand their perspectives and influence those perspectives in the favour of Trump (Granville, 2018).

Aleksandr Kogan, who is found to be a Russian-American psychological professional developed an application “thisisyorkdigitallife”, which offered ostensibly personality predictions for the targeted users (Sherr, 2018). In order to log in to the application, users are required to utilise their Facebook Account information. Along with this, the application also included some specific login processes where users are required to put their location, Facebook profile data, their friend’s data, and their interest. Through this application, Dr. Kogan harvested all the required information for Cambridge Analytica and provided about 50 million users’ raw information (Granville, 2018). The entire process was being conducted through incorporating “legitimate function” illegally within the system of Facebook.

The short-term impact of the mentioned cyber attack was found to be in the form of awareness and scepticism by the private consumers as well as government agencies of the data accumulation and collection. On the other hand, misuse of Facebook’s data leads to a long-term impact in the aspects of legislation, regulation, and litigation respectively (Clark, 2018).

Hacker threat 3: Espionage-Yahoo Attack

Facebook was found to undertake proactive measures after perceiving the incident and deleted the application that was being developed by Dr. Kogan from their site. In addition to this, Facebook also recruited Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensic organisation to reassure their users that they have completely deleted the application and improved their data security measures (Granville, 2018).

Intelligence gathering, spying, or espionage is considered as the practice of collecting confidential information or secrets from a non-disclosed source for obtaining tangible benefits. In this regard, the cyber attack that was witnessed by Yahoo can be interlinked with espionage. One of the major reasons behind this statement is that Yahoo was found to utilise improper and outdated encryption techniques that were being easily cracked by hackers (Stempel and Finkle, 2017). In addition to this, even after knowing the information sensitivity, Yahoo sold itself along with their existing user confidential information to Verizon for a deal of $4.48 billion (Perlroth, 2017). This inappropriate business decision also led to the occurrence of a cyber attack on the Yahoo platform.

The motivation of the Yahoo cyber attack can be considered as to obtain both financial and political benefits. A news report published in 2017 underlines the major attacker behind the 2013 cyber attack at Yahoo was the Russian Government. The primary motivation of the Russian government was to steal Yahoo information to spy on different targets across the United States in an unauthorised way (Perlroth, 2017).

Hackers were found to gain accessibility to Yahoo user’s account with the help of the “Phishing Scheme”. Along with this, it is identified that the mentioned organisations failed to utilise the encryption techniques while storing and collecting confidential data that in turn, maximise the opportunities for espionage cyber criminals to obtain all their required confidential information easily (Straub, 2021).

Lack of focus on the cyber security and security measure, Yahoo failed to prevent their data assets and sensitive information accurately. It is identified that improving public awareness after the occurrence of a cyber attack at the Yahoo network can be considered as a short-term impact. On the other hand, as Yahoo failed to provide data security to its existing users, it negatively affected upon their brand image and declined their chances to gain attention from the targeted users in the future as well.

In the case of Yahoo’s cyber attack, the company fails to take proactive responses or measures to assure their affected users in an appropriate manner. In addition to this, even after knowing the vulnerability of their existing security practices the company did not take any kind of security measure that had led to the occurrence of simultaneous data breach issues during 2016 and 2017 (Ojedokun & Ilori, 2021).

Discussion

Considering the three case scenarios of cyber attack, it can be mentioned that every business entity that is highly relied upon a technology-based solution or digital platform needs to improve its security measures and security policy. As mentioned by Y?lmaz & Gönen (2018), cyber attacks, vandalism, and threats have the potential to create undesirable changes to business performance. In this regard, it becomes important for companies to adopt a strategic approach to prevent sensitive and confidential information from cyber attacks. Thus, it can be mentioned that developing policies for cyber security, incorporating Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFQ), and others can be effective in terms of preventing challenges regarding a cyber attack (Swanagan, 2021).

Conclusion

In relation to the above discussion, it can be mentioned that the rate of cyber criminals and their unauthorised practices has been growing. Exposure of personal or sensitive information is maximised due to the usage of digital platforms or technology-based solutions, which provides opportunities for cyber criminals to gain unauthorised access to the required sensitive data easily with the execution of sophisticated malicious code. The mentioned case scenario underlines the lack of security measures and usage of older versioned security policies that are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Along with this, it has also been identified that some identified strategic factors could be considered to prevent cyber security challenges appropriately.

References

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Stempel, J., and Finkle, J., (2017). Yahoo says all three billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft. [Online]. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-cyber-idUSKCN1C82O1

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