Cyber Forts

19/08/2025

We've been busy securing businesses with a free vulnerability scan.

Recently we helped a fashion designer who almost had her entire business account drained by hackers. Here's how we stopped them with 3 hours to spare:

Maya runs a $1.2M fashion brand selling handmade jewellery online.

Last Friday at 6 PM, she got an alert that terrified her.

"Suspicious login attempts detected. Someone's trying to access my payment processor."

Here's what we discovered when she called:

31 critical vulnerabilities in her ecommerce store
Payment gateway completely exposed
Customer credit card data unencrypted
Her business bank account login stored in plain text
Hackers 3 hours away from a full breach

Most "cybersecurity firms" would have charged her $30K upfront and taken weeks.
We didn't.
Instead, we ran our automated vulnerability scanner immediately.
The result?

Found and sealed all 31 vulnerabilities in 4 hours
Secured her payment processing
Prevented hackers from stealing $400K+ from her accounts
Protected 5,000+ customer credit cards from being sold on the dark web

Maya's exact message: "You literally saved my life's work. I would have lost everything."

The lesson: If you're running an online store, hackers aren't just coming for your data. They're coming for your money.

P.S. - If you want to see what vulnerabilities are lurking on your website right now, comment "SCAN" below. I'll personally run our scanner on your site for free. Note you must be the owner of the website.

Send a message to learn more

30/11/2022

The latest penalties for privacy violations can seem extreme. But so are the increased measures of criminal cyber activities.

The penalties include:
- $50M fines
- 3x the value of benefit obtained through the misuse of private information
- 30% of adjusted turnover in the relevant period

If the new penalties help tighten security and protect customer data in general then aren’t they worth it?

The recent attacks that have been across the media headlines in the recent months could have been prevented with some fairly straightforward security practices. So while the penalties might seem harsh, the steps to protect against a wide range of attacks are somewhat simple house keeping.

Companies which fail to take adequate care of customer data will face much higher penalties following today's passage of the Albanese Government's legislation to significantly increase penalties for repeated or serious privacy breaches.

23/11/2022

Black Friday Sales are coming up! We love a good sale as much as the next person. Just be extra vigilant and stay alert to Black Friday and Cyber Monday scammers. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

Threat actors have been preparing for months, so keep an eye out.

03/11/2022

Small Australian Business Data Breach

Real Estate Agents Hit In Melbourne

It has happened sooner than many expected.

Australian small businesses are being targeted. Most don’t realise that it is a priority to protect themselves. A vast amount believe they are either protected or it only happens to enterprise size companies.

As previously discussed, one industry that is a prime target is the real estate industry. Small businesses in this area are prime targets.

A small family run franchise unit of Harcourts real estate agents was recently attacked. Customers including Landlords and service vendors such as tradies that help maintain the properties have been caught up in the data breach.

We originally saw the report come through via Jeremy Kirk, the editor for ISMGCorp (Information Security Media Group). Jeremy covers Australian and international cyber security.

Further details can also be read via either Jeremy’s profile on twitter or in mainstream media reports such as this SBS report (list below).

In an email sent to customers of the Melbourne City branch of Harcourts, the real estate company revealed it became aware last week that an "unknown third party" had accessed its rental property database.

18/10/2022

What will hackers do to your WordPress Websites?

One of the latest phishing kits is after more than a password.

According to W3Techs around 43% of the internet uses WordPress. And although it is a fantastic tool for creating websites, with such a large footprint it is also a focal point for attackers. Hence, they are commonly scanning the internet looking for potential weaknesses they prey on.

Once a malicious actor is in, there are a range of things that they might do on the site and stay undetected.

One of the most recently identified scams was caught by Larry Cashdollar from Akamai has identified a complex phishing kit that not only tries to steal your username and passwords, and email address using authentication requests for PayPal. But it also attempts to steal your identity. Larry explains in an interview with ‘The CyberWire’ that it tries to obtain pictures of you holding your identity, as well as your ATM PIN and your mother’s madam name. All under the act of trying to authenticate PayPal.

As suggested in the interview, hackers, might use this to setup accounts impersonating you and passing KYC (Know Your Customer) authentication on exchanges such as crypto exchanges and then use the accounts for money laundering.

This is one recent example of alternative ways a malicious hacker might use your site. And unless you were actively reviewing and monitoring the site. It would go undetected.

We have been working with a range of clients and notifying businesses running WordPress websites that have potential security flaws. Not only should you be keeping the sites resources such as PHP version, themes, and plugins up to date to avoid security flaws.

However, setting up the login credentials for both wp-admin and wp-login to utilise multi-factor passwords and throttled login attempts are one of the ways in which to increase the security on the site. A lot of small businesses might lack the resources to monitor logs and traffic on the site themselves, but there are a range of service providers that offer this at an affordable rate.

If you are unsure of how secure your website is contact our friendly team at [email protected] and we will do our best to point you in the right direction.

Resources:
The Cyber Wire Interview - https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/hacking-humans/216/notes

W3TECHS report: https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress

The CyberWire is an independent voice delivering concise, accessible, and relevant cybersecurity news briefings and cybersecurity podcasts to people all across the globe.

03/10/2022

We have been talking about this for some time.

Samantha Floreani’s article in “The Guardian” highlights one aspect of an industry that may be handling customer information and believe they are protected.

Not only the security risks around APIs and the proper implementation. But the businesses you deal with on a daily basis that hold your personal information and either know they lack security or in most cases, don’t realise it as they put their trust in others.

No matter what business you are in make sure your security is up to date by utilising the array of resources out there.

Contact the team at Cyber Forts today to organise a security audit, pentesting, monitoring and logging of your data and more.

[email protected]



Article in the Guardian:

Does a breach need to happen before we see regulatory change?

30/09/2022

https://staysafeonline.org/programs/cybersecurity-awareness-month/teach-others-how-to-stay-safe-online/

Even if you don’t think of yourself as a teacher, you have something to share with your friends, neighbors, and other people in your community.

30/09/2022

Not all IT professionals focus on, or are trained in IT security.

Much like the difference between a general doctor and a surgeon.

One specialises in general medicine. And the other specialises in a specific field of medicine.

The difference between medical professionals and IT professionals. Is that a lot of IT professionals don’t even realise the security flaws they are leaving open. especially those setting up websites and networks for small businesses.

A prime example on a corporate level is the recent data breach Optus has experienced. While they are a large enterprise, hackers are heavily targeting small businesses. The damage to small businesses isn’t in the billions as Optus are facing. The fallout after an attack is crippling. Small business losses see an average of $20,000 AUD and additional hidden costs. Such as loss of operations, business reputation, legal costs, IT costs, and more.

We would like to help protect your business and save you time and money in the long term.

We will look at helping you protect yourself, your website, your business and your customers.

Get in touch with the team at Cyber Forts.

[email protected]

27/09/2022

Important Security out-take from the recent data breach.

We have constantly been approaching been approaching companies and telling them about the risks of API security. If anything is to be taken away from recent events, please investigate tightening up your data security.

Even if you don’t understand the technical lingo, take the following to your developers, and ask if they are using the below. If they say don’t worry or these are not needed, immediately get a second opinion from a security expert. Too many developers are leaving these areas unattended on websites and apps. This creates easily hackable holes that we have seen expose a company’s clients to huge data breaches.

API Security – Best Practice

Create a comprehensive list of all APIs that are being used.
Make sure to connect all external APIs via an API gateway.
Make sure to use Throttling & Resource Quotas on all APIs
Ensure proper Logging, Monitoring and Alerting are in place
Block all unused Https methods
Use a service mesh for communication management
Implement standards for your company and make sure they are followed
Use Strict Linting of Calls
Authenticate THEN authorise
Avoid verbose error messages – don’t tell the hacker what the exact error is.
Secure Code Validation – input validation using approval lists, parameterised queries, bound checking etc

26/09/2022

4 days after the announcement of one of the biggest data breaches in Australian history . The mounting issues rising from the apparent lack of security and security plan are rapidly destroying the Telco giants reputation. Customers are feeling left out in the cold and have no answers around what to expect next.

While they are not commenting on how the attack has occurred. It has been reported (in the Guardian) that it was not a complex cyber security attack.

Most common data breaches on companies are through simple security flaws rather than complex technical attacks. While no company can ever be 100% secure, they can make sure their systems are up to date and implement strong security procedures.

What could potentially have been an easy fix is now causing a huge Australian company to face millions in legal, reputational and operational damages.

What does it means for business in general:

The importance of having a strong security system to protect against intrusions and plans for when they occur can save you and your customers hundreds of thousands.

The Privacy Act (1988) may very well need an overhaul. However, if you are handling customer data then it is time to review the strength of your cyber security.

Sources:

The Guardian: 27/09/2022
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/27/optus-customers-exasperated-by-chatbots-and-rubbish-communication-after-data-breach?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other