EE Fix Portal Which Was Secured with 'Admin' Password

Telco EE has been accused of “exposing over two million lines of private source code to their systems and employee systems,” due to the use of an admin:admin username and password combination. According to security researcher and developer “Six”, there is a Sonarqube portal on an EE subdomain, which EE uses to audit the code and discover vulnerabilities across its website and customer portal. However, it had not changed the default password from “admin”, reported ZDNet. “Access to this allows malicious hackers to analyze source code and identify vulnerabilities within,” Six said. “Actually; there's no need, since you can just view the code and take AWS keys, API keys, and more.” A spokesperson later told ZDNet that the company had changed the password and that the service was pulled offline while the company investigates, and that the portal was a tool used by the company's web development team to quality check its code. The spokesperson said: “This development code does not contain any information pertaining to our production infrastructure or production API credentials as these are maintained in separate secure systems and details are changed by a separate team. “We take the security of our customer data extremely seriously and would like to thank the researcher for bringing this issue to our attention. We're conducting a thorough investigation to make sure this does not happen again.” Luis Corrons, security evangelist at Avast Software, told Infosecurity that this is a “clear example of how inadequate security guidelines put companies in jeopardy,” but he welcomed the news that there was a password at all - although using default passwords is one of the major security risks we face nowadays. “We have seen cases before where personal data has been made publically available due to the absence of proper protection,” he said. “A prime example is the case last year in the US where three marketing companies working for the Republican Party published a database online with information on about 198 million registered voters. Anyone could download the full database because there were no security measures in place.”

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GuidePoint Security Announces Portfolio of Data Security Governance Services

GuidePoint Security | January 30, 2024

GuidePoint Security, a cybersecurity solutions leader enabling organizations to make smarter decisions and minimize risk, today announced the availability of its Data Security Governance services, which are designed to help customers address the challenges of unstructured data and data sprawl through a proven process and program to meet their unique needs. GuidePoint’s Data Security Governance services consist of policies, standards, and processes leveraging the newest technologies to meet organizations’ data governance goals in both on-prem and cloud environments. Once the right strategy is determined with the customer, GuidePoint Security consultants will review program requirements, assess current policies and controls, perform gap analysis, design and develop/enhance the program, recommend and implement supporting technologies, and create operational processes and metrics. “Whether an organization is just beginning to build their data security governance program or needs help assessing and improving an existing program, our team and service capabilities are built to meet them at their current maturity level,” said Scott Griswold, Practice Director - Security Governance Services, GuidePoint Security. “We work side by side with the customer to conduct the necessary data discovery in their environment and provide tailored recommendations for solutions and processes to ultimately build/improve upon the data security governance program.” GuidePoint’s Data Security Governance Services include: Sensitive Data Cataloging: For organizations just getting started in the process of protecting their sensitive data, GuidePoint offers Data Identification workshops to identify sensitive data types in the environment, including trade secrets, intellectual property, and sensitive business communications. Data Security Governance Program Assessment: For organizations with existing Data Security Governance or Data Protection programs, GuidePoint Security experts will assess the program to identify policy non-compliance, gaps in data protection requirements—whether legal, regulatory, contractual, or business—and program maturity levels. Data Security Governance Program Strategy Development: The GuidePoint team will work with an organization's key stakeholders to design a program strategy aligned with relevant requirements. The outputs of this effort include delivering ongoing sensitive data discovery, automated classification and labeling, the application of required sensitive data protections, restrictions on where sensitive data can be stored and sent, and data retention policy enforcement. Merger and Acquisition Data Identification: This offering provides the ability to identify sensitive data within an M&A target or recent acquisition (including locations, amounts, and access rights) and then perform penetration testing on the storage repositories where that sensitive data exists to determine the risk of data compromise. About GuidePoint Security GuidePoint Security provides trusted cybersecurity expertise, solutions and services that help organizations make better decisions that minimize risk. Our experts act as your trusted advisor to understand your business and challenges, helping you through an evaluation of your cybersecurity posture and ecosystem to expose risks, optimize resources and implement best-fit solutions. GuidePoint’s unmatched expertise has enabled a third of Fortune 500 companies and more than half of the U.S. government cabinet-level agencies to improve their security posture and reduce risk. Learn more at www.guidepointsecurity.com.

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