Top News: Ransomware Attack on Colonial Pipeline, DarkSide Targets Toshiba Unit, and more

Hackers shut down US’ largest fuel pipeline

The Colonial Pipeline in the US was hit by a ransomware attack that forced the company to take down a few of its systems, temporarily halting fuel supply from the pipeline. Operations restarted on late Wednesday, almost five days after the attack. Following the incident, President Biden signed an executive order to better equip federal agencies with cybersecurity tools. Read more about it here.

Peloton is again in controversy, this time for leaking riders’ private data

Just days after Peloton recalled its treadmills due to safety issues, it has been found that the company’s API was leaking riders’ private data. Peloton ignored a vulnerability disclosure from a penetration testing company, due to which it ended up exposing user’s age, gender, city, weight, workout statistics, etc. The leak was made public by TechCrunch journalist Zack Whittaker via this post.

Google Play Store to add privacy labels for apps

Following Apple’s recent privacy update, Google is adding a new safety section to the apps in the Play Store showing what data is being collected, stored, and how it is being used. Google will make this mandatory for its own apps as well as third-party apps to disclose what information they collect and to provide a privacy policy for users.

New WhatsApp privacy policy banned in Germany

The new WhatsApp privacy policy is expected to go into effect on May 15 globally. The move has been opposed by Germany after the Hamburg data protection agency enforced a ban on the revision using procedures introduced with the GDPR. A WhatsApp spokesperson stated that the order would not impact the continued roll-out of the update. Read more about it here.

DarkSide targets Toshiba unit in Europe

Following the attack on the Colonial Pipeline, the DarkSide ransomware group targeted a Toshiba unit in Europe on Friday. The company claimed that only a minimal amount of work data had been lost. However, a post by DarkSide stated more than 740 gigabytes of information was compromised and included passports and other personal information. Read the full news here.