A ransomware attack on a Scottish regulator in 2020 continues to significantly impact operations, with the true cost of the incident still unknown, an audit has found.

The double extortion attack hit the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on Christmas Eve 2020, forcing IT services offline.

According to a new report from Audit Scotland, the initial attack vector appears to have been a phishing email, although it’s still not 100% clear.

Despite following best practice backup guidelines, with one copy stored offline, the “sophisticated nature of the attack” meant online copies were quickly targeted, and there was no way of accessing historical records quickly, the spending watchdog claimed.

As a result, the “majority” of SEPA’s data was encrypted, stolen or lost.

Despite claiming the agency had a “high” level of cyber-maturity, independent reviews since the attack have also made 44 recommendations for enhancing the agency’s cyber-readiness and resilience.

According to Audit Scotland, it will be particularly alarming to Scottish taxpayers that more than a year on from the attack, the agency is still reinstating some of its systems.

The auditor took the rare step of issuing a “disclaimer of opinion” on SEPA’s annual accounts for 2020/21, claiming it couldn’t access enough evidence to substantiate £42m of income from contracts.

The agency still doesn’t know the total financial impact of the cyber-attack, although it has already been forced to write off over £2m in bad debts because of records lost to the incident.

“Based on management forecasts during the year, the Scottish Government gave SEPA authority to overspend by £2.5m to cover the impact of Covid19 and the cyber-attack if required,” the report claimed.

“SEPA recognizes that the cyber-attack has increased the medium to longer-term financial pressures on the organization. Its financial strategy 2020-24 had already identified potential variability in future income and expenditure streams of up to £17.9m as a worst-case scenario.”

A cyber-attack has disrupted operations at two oil storage and logistics firms in Germany.

Oiltanking GmbH Group and Mabanaft Group said on Tuesday that they had launched an investigation into a cyber-incident on Saturday. 

IT systems at both companies were affected, though the full extent of the attack is still being determined. In a statement to the Associated Press, the companies said they had hired external computer forensic specialists to discover the “full scope” of the incident.

No information has been shared yet by either company regarding the nature of the attack or its perpetrators. The companies said work is being undertaken to enable them “to restore operations to normal in all our terminals as soon as possible.”

Oiltanking GmbH Group is still operating storage tank terminals for oil, gas and chemicals in all global markets. However, the attack has forced separate entity Oiltanking Deutschland GmbH, part of Mabanaft, into “operating with limited capacity” its terminals in Germany.

The statement said that Mabanaft’s German arm had “declared force majeure for the majority of its inland supply activities in Germany.”

Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, the head of Germany’s IT security agency, Arne Schoenbohm, said that while the incident was severe, it was “not grave.” 

Schoenbohm said that 1.7% of the country’s total gas stations had been impacted by the incident, making it impossible for prices to be changed or for customers to pay for gas using a credit card. Cash payments were being accepted at some of the 233 affected facilities, most of which are in northern Germany. 

German news agency dpa reported that industry officials had said that the cyber-attack on the two companies did not pose a threat to the country’s overall fuel supplies. 

“The timing of this coincidentally aligns with Russia having threatened to shut off its pipelines into Europe as the crisis in Ukraine continues to be tense for all involved,” observed Lookout’s senior manager of security solutions, Hank Schless. 

He added: “This is the perfect example of using a high-pressure situation to create opportunity for malicious cyber-activity, which attackers do as often as they can.”

The California State Senate has passed legislation to ban the transmission of unsolicited sexually explicit images and videos without the recipient’s consent – a practice called ‘cyber flashing.’

Senate Bill 53, also known as the FLASH (Forbid Lewd Activity and Sexual Harassment) Act, was passed on Monday with bipartisan support.

Introduced in February 2020 by senators Connie Leyva and Lena Gonzalez, the legislation would establish legal protections for users of technology who receive explicit sexual consent, which they have not requested.

SB 53 would give victims of cyber flashing a private right of action against any person who knows or reasonably should know that a lewd image they sent was unsolicited. The bill would entitle the plaintiff to recover economic and non-economic damages or statutory damages between $1500 and $30,000, as well as punitive damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs and other available relief, including injunctive relief.

“I appreciate the Senate’s support of SB 53 as we are now one step closer to finally holding perpetrators of cyber flashing accountable for their abusive behavior and actions,” Senator Leyva said. 

“This form of technology-based sexual harassment is far more pervasive than many Californians realize, so it is important that we empower survivors that receive these unwanted images or videos.”

According to the Pew Research Center, 53% of young American women and 37% of young American men have been sent unsolicited explicit material while online. Most women who received uncalled for X-rated content reported being sent this material through social media platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. 

Cyber flashing also occurs via dating platforms, text messages, email and through the ‘AirDropping’ of content in public spaces.

The FLASH Act has the support of the dating app Bumble, whose CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd sees a need for stronger laws to protect internet users.

“An overwhelming majority of our time is spent online and there are simply not enough laws and deterrents in place to protect us, and women and children in particular,” said Wolfe Herd.

“It falls upon us in the technology and social media space to work hand in hand with local government and legislators to isolate the problems and develop solutions just like the FLASH Act being introduced by Senator Leyva.”

Social Security Numbers (SSN) are the type of sensitive data most commonly targeted in data breaches in the United States, according to new research published today by Spirion.

Analysis conducted against the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) database of publicly reported data breaches in the United States revealed that 65% of all sensitive data incidents in 2021 involved SSN.

The finding was included in the data protection and privacy company’s Definitive Guide to Sensitive Data Breaches: America’s Top Leaks, Attacks and Insider Hacks. Spirion’s guide is based on the analysis of more than 1,500 data breaches involving sensitive data in the United States last year.

A total of 1,862 data compromises were reported by US organizations last year, representing a 68% increase over 2020 and making 2021 steal 2017’s title of the most prolific year on record for data breaches. ITRC data showed that 83% of the year’s incidents impacted more than 150 million individuals by exposing 889 million sensitive data records.

Personal Health Information (PHI) was the second most targeted form of sensitive data and was the focus of 41% of data incidents. The third most predated forms of sensitive data were bank account information and driver’s licenses, which were each involved in 23% of incidents.

The majority of individuals affected by sensitive data breaches in 2021 (84%) were victims of incidents in the professional and business services, telecommunications and healthcare industries. The 157 reported data breaches in the professional and business services sector impacted 52 million individuals (or 35% of total individuals). Just eight incidents in the telecommunications industry impacted 47.8 million individuals (or 32% of total individuals).

Trends identified in the guide included the emergence of supply chain and third-party attacks as a leading contributor to sensitive data compromises. 

“A total of 93 third-party attacks impacted 559 organizations, exposing more than 1.1 billion data records,” said a Spirion spokesperson. 

“Of these incidents, 83% contained sensitive data, revealing PII [personally identifiable information] for 7.2 million people.”

Another trend was experiencing multiple data breaches in one year – a fate suffered by more than two dozen US organizations in 2021.