AppCheck Security Blog

When we think of cyber-attacks our minds often flash to larger corporations and massive data leaks for millions of customers, but these are just the ones we see reported in the news. In fact the Verizon 2019 Data Breach Report found that 43% of breaches involved small business victims.

Cyber-attacks are on the rise and for most SMEs trying to get your head around them and protect your business can be a daunting and difficult task. We have complied a list of 8 steps to help prevent breaches including practical advice on what to do should a breach occur.

Since the introduction of GDPR regulations in May 2018 the possible consequences of hacks have increased with data breaches now potentially leading to large fines.

At the back end of last year British Airways became a target of a cyber attack which compromised the financial data of it’s customers.
For a period of around 2 weeks hackers exploited the British Airlines website undetected, being able to access personal and financial details of customers, believed to be around 400,000. Being able to access names, addresses, credit card numbers, expiry dates and even three-digit CVV codes on the back of the cards gave the hackers everything they needed to make fraudulent payments.

Three AWS S3 Buckets, owned by data management company Attunity, have exposed customer data of some major global companies. This data was found on publicly accessibly Amazon S3 Buckets which were not password protected and includes email correspondence, system passwords, sales and marketing contact information, project specifications and employee personal data. The total size of the leak is still unclear.

As app development becomes more complex and incorporates more features than ever, it is critical to make sure security testing is embedded in your security development life cycle. The appetite for faster release cycles has never been greater, but even if your organisation is rushing to production, code needs to be secure before it is deployed.

The AppCheck research team identified a security flaw (CVE-2018-2505) within SAP Hybris affecting many large online retailers. The security flaw was due to an insecure JavaScript library that allows malicious JavaScript to be injected into a user’s session with the affected Hybris application.