SYSTEM INTRUSION 2
Systems Intrusion
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Systems Intrusion
Systems intrusion by unauthorized access by the attacker significantly exposes the individual, company as well as school to suffer significant data breaches, which leads to adverse data manipulation and alterations. One such system intrusion incidents happened to Yahoo company resulting in significant data breaches. These cybersecurity issues advanced for four years commencing from 2012. Each attack took on a separate methodology each time, targeting a different set of information. The system intrusion is linked to a lack of adequate security policies adoption by Yahoo, which thereby made it a straightforward target for cyber attackers. As a result, crucial personal information regarding Yahoo users and management was exposed, and this was a very disastrous period for the company (Cybersecurity hub, 2019).
The extent of damage caused by Yahoo
In the 2013 attack, the system intrusion attack resulted in significant exposure of Yahoo users sensitive information regarding the users names, telephone numbers, date of birth, users passwords which had been encrypted, as well as information relating to security questions used to reset passwords. After the breach, all yahoo users were therefore mandated to change their passwords as well as undertake a background check to ensure that passwords used by the users on other sites were no similar to their yahoo passwords. This 2013 attack exposed I billion user accounts (Timberg & Tsukayama, 2016).
In 2016, yahoo yet again fell victim to another system intrusion attack, and in its announcement in September 2016, yahoo announced that more than 200 million customers’ accounts had been targets of this cybercrime. They obtained these findings as they were investigating a separate data breach. They had managed to identify one of the sellers named peace who was believed to be a broker of information. In November 2016, Yahoo learned of yet another system intrusion. The hacker had been able to successfully and undetectably access some Yahoo files and distributed them to the law enforcement agencies. This stolen information by the hackers had affected over 1 billion yahoo users worldwide. Another 2017 attack on yahoo occurred in February. Not much detail was provided regarding the damage caused by these system intrusions by the organization.
Method of a system intrusion.
The hackers used phishing technology. Yahoo had made a habit of applying cookie use for purposes of giving users quick access to their passwords and usernames. As a result, there was no need for re-entering this information every time the user wanted to log in on the site. The hackers were, therefore, able to gain access to the proprietary codes and used them to forge their cookies, which they used to gain access and log in to the site without using any passwords. Yahoo had put in place weak security algorithms e.g., MD5 algorithm, which is well known for its lack of ability to withstand brute system intrusion attacks. Yahoo failed to adequately and regularly carry out risk assessment tests in their systems to check for any vulnerabilities and patch them effectively and timely. As a result, Yahoo failed in a big way to protect its customers and users due to underfunding its security systems (Stone, 2019).
Preventive measures which could have been undertaken by Yahoo
Yahoo could have adopted an effective intrusion adoption system(IPS), which would work to ensure the detection and prevention of any identifiable threats. By choosing this policy, the Yahoo security system would have been in the frontline of continuous monitoring of the network scouting for any possible malicious incidents as well as s gathering enough information regarding them. These IPS reports could have provided could have helped the system administrators to take necessary preventive action e.g., closing the identified access points as well as useful firewall configuration to prevent the occurrence of future events. The IPS would have used various approaches e.g., signature-based, anomaly-based, as well as policy-based strategies to protect Yahoo’s system from any unauthorized access (Rouse, 2020).
REFERENCES
Cybersecurity hub. (2019, December 30). Top cybersecurity breaches so far. Cyber Security Hub. https://www.cshub.com/attacks/articles/top-5-cyber-security-breaches-of-2019-so-far
Rouse, M. (2020, February 12). What is an intrusion prevention system (IPS)? SearchSecurity. https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/intrusion-prevention
Stone, N. (2019, April 7). The Yahoo cyber attack & what should you learn from it? Cashfloat. https://www.cashfloat.co.uk/blog/technology-innovation/yahoo-cyber-attack/
Timberg, C., & Tsukayama, H. (2016, December 14). The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/yahoo-says-1-billion-user-accounts-hacked/2016/12/14/a301a7d8-b986-4281-9b13-1561231417c0_story.html
