Scam of the day – December 10, 2024 – MOVEit Supply Chain Attack Claims 760,000 More Victims

Steven Weisman, Esq.

1 year ago

Repeatedly since 2023 I have been telling you about cybercriminals, exploiting a vulnerability found in MOVEit file transfer software used by 620 organizations including American Airlines, TD Ameritrade, Johns Hopkins University and other users of the same software who can be assumed to also have suffered data breaches affecting an estimated 40 million people.

This supply chain attack brings back memories of the 2020 SolarWinds supply chain security breach. SolarWinds is a company that provides system management software to 30,000 companies and government agencies. Hackers exploited a vulnerability in its software that, in turn, led to data breaches at thousands of governmental and private entities.

In the last month, personal information that appears to have been stolen through the MOVEit software of 760,000 employees of Xerox, Koch, Nokia, Bank of America, Bridgewater, Morgan Stanley and JLL were made available on the Dark Web by hackers who call themselves Nam3L3ss.

As I have reminded you many times, we are only as safe and secure as the security of the companies, government agencies and websites that have our personal information. Even if you are extremely diligent in protecting your personal information, you can be in danger of identity theft and scams if your personal information falls into the hands of hackers.

Even when the leaked information does not directly lead to identity theft, the information is often used by scammers and identity thieves to create convincing socially engineered phishing emails and text messages to lure people into becoming scam or identity theft victims.

So what can you do to protect yourself from these data breaches that will be occurring?

TIPS

One important lesson is to limit the amount of personal information that you provide to companies and websites whenever possible. For example, your doctor doesn’t need your Social Security number for his or her records.

You should make sure that you have a unique password for each of your online accounts so that if one of your passwords is compromised in a data breach, all of your accounts will not be in danger. If your information is compromised in a data breach, you should immediately change the password for that account.

If you have not already done so, set up dual factor authentication for each of you accounts where it is available. This will protect you from having those accounts stolen by someone who may have access to your password.

Freezing your credit is also something everyone should do. It is free and easy to do. In addition, it protects you from someone using your identity to obtain loans or make large purchases even if they have your Social Security number. If you have not already done so, put a credit freeze on your credit reports at all of the major credit reporting agencies. Here are links to each of them with instructions about how to get a credit freeze:

https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze/
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

Regularly monitoring your credit reports for indications of fraud is also something we all should do. The three major credit reporting agencies now provide free weekly access to your credit reports so you can monitor your credit reports easily on your own. Here is the only link to use to get your free credit reports.https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

Some scammers have websites that appear to offer “free” credit reports, but if you read the fine print, you often may find that you have signed up for unnecessary services.

As for the significant threat of supply chain attacks, while there is little that we as individuals can do to protect ourselves, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is working together with private industry released new best practices guidelines for companies to implement to reduce the threat of supply chain attacks. While these best practice guidelines are not mandatory, it is hoped that companies will follow them.

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