A vengeful former staff member of a San Jose sports stadium concessionaire has admitted carrying out a costly cyber-attack against his ex-employer after losing his job. 

Salvatore A. La Rosa worked for Spectra Food Services and Hospitality from Valentine’s Day 2015 until his termination on January 6, 2020. Spectra was the concessions contractor for California’s Earthquakes Stadium, home of Major League Soccer team the San Jose Earthquakes. 

To sell food and other concession items at the stadium, Spectra relied on the use of mobile tablets that displayed menus and payment selections from an online-based application as their point-of-sale terminals.

In federal court on February 17, 2021, La Rosa admitted logging into the administrative port for the Earthquakes Stadium from his home using his old work password after he had left the company. After accessing the system without permission, 41-year-old La Rosa intentionally deleted Spectra’s concession menu and payment selections.

With a few clicks of his mouse, La Rosa caused all of the point-of-sale tablets used by Spectra’s staff to stop working and made it impossible for the company to accept credit cards. 

The timing of the cyber-attack forced Spectra staff working during a soccer match on February 29, 2020, to take handwritten orders and use calculators to complete cash transactions. In addition to causing delays and lost sales, the attack resulted in La Rosa’s former colleagues’ being verbally abused by disgruntled customers. 

According to court documents, Spectra had to provide free food and beverages to some club members because of its inability to process credit card transactions.

In an attempt to regain the trust of its customers, Spectra and the San Jose Earthquakes offered 50% off all concessions sold at a subsequent game played at the stadium on March 7. 

Charging documents filed in the case stated that the attack lost Spectra $268,000 in damages, consisting of lost revenue, employee time and labor costs to repair the damage to the data, and concession discounts offered on March 7.

La Rosa has pleaded guilty to one count of Intentional Damage to a Protected Computer. He is due to be sentenced on May 19, 2021. 

A number of influential companies have formed a consortium that aims to reduce the amount of disinformation, misinformation, and fraudulent content on the internet. 

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a Joint Development Foundation project, has been founded by Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft, and photo and video verification platform Truepic.

Member organizations plan to jointly develop technical standards for certifying the source and history or provenance of media content. 

In a statement released today, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “C2PA member organizations will work together to develop content provenance specifications for common asset types and formats to enable publishers, creators and consumers to trace the origin and evolution of a piece of media, including images, videos, audio and documents.”

“These technical specifications will include defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how that information is presented and stored, and how evidence of tampering can be identified.”

C2PA will use an open standard that can be adopted by any online platform, enabling platforms to preserve and read provenance-based digital content. The coalition hopes that its actions will increase the amount of trust that can be placed in online content. 

Jeffrey McGregor, CEO of Truepic, said: “We firmly believe that ecosystemwide adoption through an open standard is crucial to the long-term health of the internet. The C2PA will streamline the distribution of high-integrity digital content at scale, a vital step in restoring society’s shared sense of reality.”

Coalition members say that collaboration with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies is necessary to allow a comprehensive provenance standard to be developed and broadly adopted. 

Microsoft chief scientific officer and project origin executive sponsor Eric Horvitz said technological advancements had helped fake information to spread around the internet like wildfire. 

“There’s a critical need to address widespread deception in online content—now supercharged by advances in AI and graphics and diffused rapidly via the internet,” said Horvitz. 

“Our imperative as researchers and technologists is to create and refine technical and sociotechnical approaches to this grand challenge of our time. We’re excited about methods for certifying the origin and provenance of online content.”

A leading venture capital firm based in California’s Silicon Valley has fallen victim to a cyber-attack.

According to Axios, Sequoia Capital contacted investors on Friday, February 19, to inform them that their financial data and personal information had been accessed by an unauthorized third party. The data breach occurred after the email account belonging to an employee at the firm was compromised in a phishing attack. 

Sequoia Capital is run from offices on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. Companies that the firm has invested in include Airbnb, DoorDash, 23andMe, GitHub, Google, Zoom, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Robinhood, and cybersecurity firms Carbon Black, Tessian, and FireEye. 

The 49-year-old firm said law enforcement had been notified of the security breach and that IT specialists had been hired to investigate what happened and restore cybersecurity to the company. 

“We recently experienced a cybersecurity incident. Our security team responded promptly to investigate, and we contacted law enforcement and engaged leading outside cybersecurity experts to help remediate the issue and maintain the ongoing security of our systems,” said a Sequoia spokesperson.

“We regret that this incident has occurred and have notified affected individuals. We have made considerable investments in security and will continue to do so as we work to address constantly evolving cyber threats.”

Sequoia Capital, which Pitchbook data states has more than $38bn in assets under management, said it had found no evidence that any investor data compromised in the incident has been misused.  

“Phishing attacks are a real threat for many organizations. However, not all phishing security incidents are equal and successful phishing attacks that compromise employees with privileged access or access to privileged data can have a serious impact either from ransomware or data theft,” Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Thycotic told Infosecurity Magazine.

“The latest news regarding Sequoia Capital shows that privileged access continues to be a major challenge for organizations and how critical it is to protect privileged access and access to privileged data,” Carson said. “Privileged access is no longer just about domain admins . . . [I]t is also important to consider business users who have access to sensitive data as privileged access.”

Cybersecurity giant Kaspersky has announced the appointment of Christopher Hurst as general manager of UK and Ireland.

Hurst boasts a 34-year career in the software industry and a proven record of accomplishment in the European tech sector, having held roles at various firms including Veritas/Symantec and Cloudistics.

Kaspersky said his initial objectives include overseeing growth in the company’s enterprise business, generating a stronger presence in the UK channel and implementing a solid strategy to recruit more partners and customers across the B2B portfolio.

Commenting on his appointment, Hurst said: “I’m excited to be taking on this role within such a fast-paced industry and growing company, as Kaspersky continues to take a frontline role in making the world more cyber-secure. The cornerstone of our business strategy in this region is to transform our leading security intelligence into real protection for our clients, to enable them to use technologies in their lives and businesses safely, and trust them. Our goal is to bring on the future for our customers.

“I’m passionate about protecting this country’s industries and consumers, and that’s one of the key reasons I’ve joined Kaspersky.”

Chris Connell, deputy VP of global sales network, MD of APAC and Japan, Kaspersky, added: “We’re very happy to welcome Chris Hurst to Kaspersky. His vast experience in this sector and demonstrated leadership ability from startups to enterprise businesses will bring real value to the business. We are confident that he will help drive strong regional growth in 2021 and beyond, and continue to support and protect our customers from ever-changing and growing cyber-threats.”

The BBC has reported the theft of 105 electrical devices from its premises over the last two years, according to data obtained following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by litigation firm Griffin Law. The findings have raised fears that confidential information contained in these devices will have fallen into the hands of malicious actors.

A total of 35 mobile phones were stolen over the two years from the premises of the UK’s public service broadcaster: 19 during 2019 and 16 in 2020. Additionally, 17 laptops and MacBooks were taken over this time, 11 in 2019 and six in 2020, and two tablet computers were stolen last year.

Other electrical devices reported as stolen in the two-year period were 36 individual microphones, four hard drives, one camcorder and one firestick.

In response, the BBC said in a statement: “The BBC takes incidents of crime seriously and we are constantly implementing and reviewing measures to reduce crime and recover lost and stolen items.”

Experts believe that the difficulties in preventing theft of such equipment within large mobile workforces highlight the importance of having stringent cybersecurity controls in electrical devices to keep sensitive data safe.

Edward Blake, area vice-president, Absolute Software UK&I, commented: “One of the biggest challenges facing organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic has been successfully securing and managing key devices like laptops from loss, theft and rising cyber-risks. You can’t protect what you cannot see. With so many people either working remotely or on the move, large organizations like the BBC will inevitably see devices go missing, some of which will contain confidential data.

“With many businesses now requiring their employees to work from home, corporations can no longer be solely reliant on network-based security; they need to increase their focus on securing the actual endpoint devices. This means ensuring they have an unbreakable digital tether to all devices, capable of delivering complete visibility and control, enabling real-time insights into the state of those devices, and allowing them to self-heal security controls and productivity tools.”