Norton Rose Fulbright Canada’s cyber litigation team recently obtained an order in favour of an insurer, granting it relief from forfeiture in respect of more than 11 bitcoins from the assets seized from a prolific ransomware gang.[1] This case was the first of its kind and confirms an insurer’s ability to seek recovery for losses … Continue reading
On December 9, 2021 a critical vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) was reported within the Apache Log4j Java logging framework. The vulnerability allows threat actors to remotely execute code on both on-premises and cloud-based application servers, thereby obtaining control of the impacted servers. This is a critical vulnerability of very high significance to government and industry groups. See … Continue reading
The Personal Data (Privacy) (Amendment) Bill 2021 (the Bill) aimed at combatting doxxing in Hong Kong was passed on 29 September 2021. As discussed in our earlier post, the Bill amends the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (PDPO) by: introducing offences to criminalize doxxing acts; empowering the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (the Commissioner) to conduct … Continue reading
On September 28, 2021, the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a draft bill that would, among other things, require nearly all entities that make a ransom payment as the result of a ransomware attack against the entity to report the payment to the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency … Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) implemented additional measures today to combat the growing ransomware problem. OFAC’s measures consist of: (1) the designation of the entire SUEX OTC, S.R.O. (“SUEX”) crypto-currency exchange (SUEX) to the SDN List; (2) designating a fairly large number (~25) additional digital currency addresses to the … Continue reading
On July 22, 2021, a federal court in Pennsylvania held that an investigative report created by Kroll (the “Kroll Report”), the defendant’s third party cybersecurity consultant, and related communications were not protected by privilege. The court found that the Kroll Report was not protected by the work-product doctrine or attorney-client privilege. The decision comes after … Continue reading
On March 10, 2020, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) issued guidance to all of its regulated institutions engaged in virtual currency business activity, requiring them to have plans for preparedness to manage the possible operational and financial risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. NYDFS requires the plans to be submitted by Thursday, April 9, … Continue reading
In a judgment which will be warmly welcomed by employers (and their insurers) in the UK, the UK Supreme Court today overruled the Court of Appeal in holding that that Morrisons supermarkets is not vicariously liable for a data breach maliciously caused by a former employee.… Continue reading
An interim proprietary injunction has been granted by the English High Court over a bitcoin ransom payment paid to a third-party wallet.… Continue reading
The GDPR has significantly altered the landscape of data protection. Its broad scope and potentially severe penalties have forced those who hold and process data to take note of its provisions. In certain instances, that will include many in the international arbitration community, such as arbitral institutions. In parallel, cyber attacks and instances of hacking … Continue reading
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) may not be the first agency that comes to mind with respect to cybersecurity, but the SEC has been in the headlines recently with respect to cyber fraud in particular. Earlier this month, the SEC promulgated a report urging companies to take preventive measures against cyber fraud.… Continue reading
On July 23 and 25, 2018, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held public briefings about an attempt by a state-sponsored Russian hacking group to target control systems for U.S. electrical grids and power plants. DHS’ webinar explained that the hackers obtained access to vendors providing computer services to electric utilities companies. This initial … Continue reading
By June 30, 2018, retailers accepting digital (online) credit card transactions must cease using encryption protocols known as SSL or TLS 1.0. Retailers must transition to TLS 1.1 or higher (such as the popular TLS 1.2) or else lose the ability to accept credit card payments.… Continue reading
The Singapore Parliament passed the much discussed Cybersecurity Bill (the Bill) on 5 February 2018 and it is anticipated that the new law will come into force soon.… Continue reading
Slightly over one year ago, several major distributed denial-of-service (“DDoS”) attacks took place, including a major event affecting the domain name service provider Dyn, which caused outages and slowness for a number of popular sites, including Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Twitter. Now, a new Internet of Things (IoT) botnet, called IoT Reaper, or … Continue reading
In a bid to keep pace with advancements in the technological landscape, the Singapore Government has in recent months embarked on public consultations on its draft Cybersecurity Bill (the Cyber Bill) and its proposed amendments to Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) to update the country’s data protection regime. These changes will have a significant … Continue reading
A new strain of malware began infecting computer systems across the globe on Tuesday. Similar to the WannaCry ransomware that struck last month, the malware used in this week’s attack spreads quickly across multiple computers on a network, encrypting files and displaying a ransom note that requests $300 worth of bitcoin for a decryption key. … Continue reading
In this post, we summarize key facts regarding the WannaCry ransomware attack, provide an abbreviated list of known affected companies, and offer an overview of the legal issues and the response to the attack. This post is an update to our prior coverage of WannaCry.… Continue reading
A large-scale ransomware attack began impacting companies and hospitals across the United States, Europe, and Asia early Friday morning. According to reports, companies in more than 70 countries have reported incidents as of Friday afternoon. The attacks are being caused by ransomware called “WannaCry,” which quickly moves across systems to encrypt large amounts of computer … Continue reading
A two-month consultation on proposed measures to reduce and mitigate cyber security risks associated with internet trading of securities in Hong Kong (the Consultation) was launched on 8 May 2017 by the Securities and Futures Commission (the SFC). The Consultation follows a recent review by the SFC of resilience of brokers in Hong Kong to … Continue reading
Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission has on 21 March 2017 issued a warning to a local firm for disclosing a former employee’s personal information in a company WhatsApp group. A director at the firm, Executive Coach International, had shared highly sensitive information about the former employee with 58 members of a chat group comprising staff … Continue reading
Several significant distributed denial-of-service (“DDoS”) attacks have taken place in the last few weeks, including a major event involving a domain name service provider (Dyn), which caused outages and slowness for many popular sites like Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Twitter. This significant attack came on the heels of two major DDoS attacks against … Continue reading
The United Arab Emirates Penal Code was amended with effect from October 29, 2016 to outlaw the copying, distribution or disclosure of information that a person obtains in the course of their employment. This new offence will target company insiders (or service providers) unlawfully dealing in personal data. Other changes to the Penal Code will … Continue reading
On Friday, October 21, a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were launched against the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. DNS hosts operate in a manner akin to a switchboard for the Internet, helping to route domain names (e.g., dataprotectionreport.com) to underlying IP addresses (e.g., 104.28.6.115). By attacking Dyn, hackers were … Continue reading