Hackers Blast Anti-Semitic Texts, Decelerate Roadrunner Wireless, and Infiltrate Key Australian Supercomputer Agency

In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches: 

Mix-up on Adele.com Ticket Site Exposes Customer Data

Fans seeking advance tickets for the singer's tour say they saw other people's shopping baskets, including payment details, upon checkout.

Ticketing company Songkick said because of the "extreme load" on the site, some customers could view others' account details.

"At no time was anyone able to access another person's password, nor their payment or credit card details (which are not retained by Songkick)," the outfit said.

Kiran Farmah tweeted, "I got through to buying tickets but it came up with someone else's screen with their card details and home address.”

Emma Harris told the BBC she had experienced a similar problem:

"After queuing for an hour and half, we clicked the tickets we wanted [and] got pushed through to another screen but different tickets were selected. We went with these anyway because we thought otherwise we'd lose out. But when we got to the next screen, where you fill in your details, all of the boxes were already filled in with somebody else's name, somebody else's address and somebody else's credit card number."

Security consultant Graham Cluley said: "It sounds like the website [code] has been written insecurely. It's spitting out other people's information -- information which they would expect to have been kept private." 

Ex-Roadrunner Wireless Engineer Allegedly Hacked His Former Employer – Even After Arrest

Gordon Logan is accused of hacking into the servers at Roadrunner Wireless Internet Service, where he worked for 16 years.

A current employee tipped off authorities to some strange activity on the company’s server. Investigators then found Logan had hacked the service provider and changed passwords. 

Logan also allegedly changed the Roadrunner customer service phone number to ring him instead.

He was arrested early last month and posted bond, but he apparently had not finished his business.

“The suspect did continue, even after being charged, to represent himself as a representative of the company,” Rio Rancho police Capt. Paul Rogers said. “He was walking into businesses without being challenged about why he was there, or what he was doing.”

Logan said he believes the people running the company are not equipped to do so.

“They don’t know anything about the network,” Logan said. “These guys are not qualified to run the network.”

China Accused of Breaching Strategic Australian Meteorology Computers

The incident occurred at the Bureau of Meteorology, which owns one of Australia’s largest supercomputers and provides critical information to many agencies.

Its systems reach across the nation, including one link into the Department of Defense in Canberra.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. has been told this is a "massive" breach and one official said there was little doubt where it came from.

"It's China," he said.

The motivation behind the hack attack could be commercial, strategic or both.

The bureau is a key national resource and another nation state would place a high value on its intellectual property and scientific research.

Disrupting Australia's ability to accurately forecast weather would affect the operation of military and commercial aircraft.

Beyond that, the bureau provides a gateway to other agencies.

"They're looking for the weakest link and so if you go into an agency, which may have a level of security clearance, but perhaps not as high as central parts of the national security community, maybe there are weaknesses they can exploit which will enable them to then move into other, more highly-valued targets," Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said. 

SMSGlobal Hack Facilitated 'Death to the Jews' Text Messages

Hackers stole data from the global telecommunications firm that enabled the transmission of 5,000 texts carrying the anti-Semitic message.

The data was filched in 2013. The messaging campaign took place in 2015.

In April 2015, the attacker attempted to send more than 4 million messages to phone numbers across the Middle East. The content read: “Our motto forever Death to America, Death to the Jews.”

SMSGlobal blocked most messages, but approximately 5,000 were distributed to mobile numbers in the United Arab Emirates.

A letter obtained by the Guardian from SMSGlobal to the Dubai telecommunications company DU said the intruders were able to use “a brute force attack” to penetrate accounts, because of a “number of vulnerabilities,” such as customer passwords not being encrypted, uncomplicated user accounts, and platform code that was no longer supported.

(Image via scyther5/Shutterstock.com)