Author: Caleb Townsend

Caleb Townsend is a staff writer  for the United States Cybersecurity Magazine. He has been crafting his passion for film-making and script writing since childhood. While not a tech person by training, Caleb has held a passion for journalism and writing, which he discovered working for his college newspaper. Caleb graduated from Eastern Mennonite University in 2017, receiving his bachelor’s degree for Digital Media with a minor in Journalism, and is now a full time employee of the United States Cybersecurity Magazine.

Microsoft Data Breach Results in 250 Million Records Exposed

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Microsoft

Microsoft has revealed that a long spanning data breach, affecting information dating as far back as 14 years, has exposed the data of 250 million users. According to a blog post from the Microsoft Security Response Center, they finished an investigation on January 22nd, regarding access misconfiguration for the customer support database. In the blog … Read more

Millions of Wawa Customers’ Credit Cards are Being Sold on the Dark Web

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Wawa gas station

On December 19, 2019, Wawa announced that there was malware on its payment processing server between December 10th and December 12th. This malware affected all of their branches. Now they are announcing that they are aware of multiple attempts to sell customer card information on the dark web. The payment cards were reportedly found on … Read more

WeLeakInfo Shut Down by FBI for Selling Billions of Stolen Data to Subscribers

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

WeLeakInfo

On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) successfully seized and shut down WeLeakInfo, a website dedicated to selling access to billions of personal records seized in data breaches. WeLeakInfo has scavenged data from over 10,000 data breaches, resulting in over 12 billion unique data points. Some of the common information this site would expel … Read more

Logic Bombs: How to Prevent Them

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Logic Bomb concept, illustrating logic bombs, tick tock, white time bomb

A logic bomb is a piece of malicious code that hackers insert into a software or operating system. This code lies dormant until a specific condition occurs. These conditions could be a pre-determined time (often referred to also as a time bomb) or a specific command that the user types in. Once the conditions occur, … Read more

Landry’s Inc Warns Customers of Data Breach Potentially Affecting More Than 60 Restaurants

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Landry's data breach restaurant card

Landry’s Inc, the Houston-based parent company of over 600 restaurants, casinos, and hotels across the United States, has released a blog post notice informing their customers of a data breach. Some of the restaurants potentially affected include Atlantic Grill, Bubba Gump Shrimp, Golden Nugget, Mitchell’s Steakhouse, Rainforest Cafe, Strip House, and Dos Caminos. In their … Read more

LifeLabs Suffers a Data Breach Revealing the Health Data of 15 Million Canadians

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

LifeLabs Logo, LifeLabs Storefront, LifeLabs Signs

LifeLabs has revealed that 15 million Canadians may have had their data leaked after a being hit with a cyber-attack in October. LifeLabs is a diagnostics testing company, the largest healthcare laboratory test company in Canada. In a recent blog post, they revealed that most of the victim were in Ontario and British Columbia. The … Read more

The Biggest 2020 Cybersecurity Threats

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

2020 trends, cybersecurity threats, 2020 building blocks, 2019 to 2020 change

Cybersecurity threats, as we discussed in our recent 2019 data breach article, were a huge problem in 2019. Within the first 6 months, Forbes reported that 2019 yielded 3,800 publicly disclosed breaches, a 52% increase from 2018’s first 6 months. 2019 saw data breaches in every sector, from financial and healthcare, to government and entertainment. … Read more

Safe Apps: How Can You Tell?

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Safe App, Kids safety, kid on Ipad, cybersafe

StandHogg Hits Google Store According to Forbes, Google Android Threats continue to permeate through malware ridden apps that may affect many Android users. Researchers at the Norwegian app security company Promon claim that safe apps can be corrupted through dangerous vulnerabilities. In this particular case, the vulnerability, being dubbed “StrandHogg”, allows dangerous malware to pose … Read more

Montgomery County Public Schools Suffers Data Breach Affecting 6,000 Student Accounts

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Montgomery school computer lab

Montgomery County Public Schools has suffered a data breach at the hands of a student, compromising the data of nearly 6,000 students. Montgomery has put out a Data Incident Response report informing their student body and surrounding community that the student in question accessed Naviance, an online college and career readiness solution program. Furthermore, a … Read more

Mixcloud Suffers a Data Breach Exposing the Information of Over 20 Million Users

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

MixCloud Website

Mixcloud, a British online crowd-sourced streaming service, disclosed that 21 million user accounts have been stolen from the site and are being sold on the dark web. According to Vice, the seller, “A_W_S”, is asking for 0.5 in bitcoin, translating to $4,000 dollars for the data. The breach took place earlier this month, though Mixcloud … Read more