Posted: April 17th, 2022

Digital Security and Ethics

Digital Security and Ethics

Summary
The aim of this paper is to guage and reply to digital safety threats and consider info ethics and public coverage issues in areas reminiscent of privateness and free speech. The group recognized to have suffered a safety risk on this case is named Below Armor Inc. The corporate makes a speciality of manufacturing footwear, sports activities and informal clothes. The corporate was not too long ago attacked by hackers. The findings of this examine revealed that the safety risk that affected Below Armor’s clients is kind of widespread, and the assault could be attributed to the corporate’s use of a password hashing known as SHA-1, which is notoriously weak. The outcomes additionally revealed that the group misplaced three % of its shares because of the assault. Moreover, it was revealed that Below Armor grew to become conscious of the breach a month later after it occurred and solely reported the incident four days after discovering out. As such, it is suggested that the corporate makes use of correct encryption and salt person passwords to stop such assaults sooner or later.

Introduction/background
Below Armor Inc. is a company based mostly in the USA and manufactures footwear, sports activities and informal clothes. The corporate is likely one of the many organizations that have been victims of cyber assaults in 2018. Below Armor reported that information from 100 and fifty million MyFitnessPal eating regimen and health software accounts was breached in February this yr (Shaban, 2018). The safety breach occurs to be one of many largest cyberattacks in historical past. Different giant hacks embody the safety breach in yahoo accounts which occurred in 2013, main to three billion accounts being compromised, and cyberattacks on credentials of over 412 million customers of grownup web sites run by FriendFinder Networks Inc. two years in the past (Shaban, 2018). The assault on Below Armor resulted in a lower of its shares by three% in after-hours commerce. The breached information included scrambled passwords, e mail addresses, and person names for the well-known MyFitnessPal cell software and web site (Shaban, 2018). Notably, driver license numbers, fee card information and social safety numbers weren’t affected. Whereas the hack didn’t goal monetary information, big piles of stolen e mail addresses can show to be useful to hackers. As an example, e mail addresses that have been stolen from JPMorgan Chase clients in 2014 have been later utilized by cyber criminals to pump and dump schemes to extend the costs of shares (Lucas, 2017).
Assessment, Ethics, and Public Coverage Implications
Assessment
The safety risk is kind of widespread. Below Armor seems to be the most recent sufferer of a series of cyberattacks affecting organizations in each trade. For instance, Orbitiz which is a journey reserving web site not too long ago reported that it was a sufferer of hacks, and the safety breach affected roughly 850,000 fee playing cards from the customers’ websites (Lucas, 2017). Additionally, Equifax, which is a buyer credit score reporting group, not too long ago reported that it skilled one other colossal breach of knowledge impacting about greater than two million purchasers in 2017, 6 months after disclosing a earlier hack that impacted greater than 140 million further people. Different primary firms which have confronted in depth breaches of safety in recent times embody Uber, Yahoo and pentagon (Lucas, 2017).
Below Armor has been in operation since 1996. All through the years, the corporate has run easily with none incidents of safety breaches. As such, the cyberattack that occurred in the direction of the start of this yr was the primary certainly one of its form. In actual fact, the invention of the assault got here as a shock. To date, the corporate will not be conscious of how the assault was carried out. Because of this, it’s nonetheless working in collaboration with main safety firms to establish the hackers and how they carried out the assault (Shaban, 2018). Below Armor can be working with legislation enforcement businesses to research the identical and carry these concerned to guide.
Below Armor protected passwords saved by hashing them, or altering them into incomprehensible characters strings. Nevertheless, there was one important difficulty: Despite defending the passwords of its purchasers very properly, the group dedicated the error of solely hashing among the passwords using the vigorous perform known as bcrypt; the remaining passwords have been guarded by a hashing scheme known as the SHA-1, which was weaker, and has recognized faults (Shaban, 2018). This means that the cyber criminals presumably hacked some phase of the stolen passwords with a lot ease to promote or make the most of in different on-line rip-offs (Nemati, 2008). The circumstance, although not an all-time worst safety breach, was a disturbing reminder of the undependable safety state on company networks. The corporate has not disclosed the precise quantity of monetary harm it suffered because of the safety breach. Relatively, it talked about that its shares within the monetary market had dropped by three % because of the assault.
Moral implications
The safety breach occurred in February, 2018, however Below Armor grew to become conscious of it on 25th March, 2018. This consciousness prompted the group to take steps geared toward establishing the character and extent of the matter and to tell its purchasers in regards to the incident. The corporate didn’t report the incident in a well timed method. After studying in regards to the hack, Below Armor took 4 days to inform its MyFitnessPal neighborhood in regards to the matter by way of e mail and through in-app messaging (Shaban, 2008). The group additionally offered the customers of this software with suggestions with regard to account safety steps they will apply to help in guarding their private info. As well as, it urged the customers of the MyFitnessPal app to alter their passwords instantly. Nonetheless, in comparison with different organizations, Below Armor’s reporting was timelier. As an example, firms like Equifax, took some weeks to announce to its customers it had been hacked and Uber, took greater than 12 months (after attempting to cowl up the cyberattack) to inform customers.
The group met among the state and safety incident requirement and failed to satisfy some. Corporations are required to report info safety occasions, the place the privateness and integrity of civilian info is probably breached, inside 1hr after the corporate’s safety workforce identifies the breach (Kosseff, 2017). Below Armor didn’t meet this requirement because it reported the safety breach incident after four days. Nevertheless, the corporate met different necessities. As such, Below Armor was in a position to report on the impression the breach had on it (misplaced its shares), the form of info misplaced (passwords, e mail addresses and person names), the primary time the hack was seen (25th March, 2018), and the variety of customers affected (on this case, they have been 150 million)
Public coverage issues (privateness and free speech)
Info privateness entails defending the confidentiality of particular person info and is generally associated to particular person information saved in laptop programs (Kosseff, 2017). The requirement to protect info privateness applies to particular person info like monetary information, web site information, private identification information and enterprise associated information amongst others (Vermaat et al., 2016). On this context, the knowledge privateness of Below Armor’s clients was breached. Because of this the shoppers’ private info was now not protected, and as such, it was susceptible to misuse by cyber criminals.
Free speech is the appropriate given to people or communities to voice out their opinions and ideologies with out worry of punishment or retaliation. As instances of cybercrime change into rampant, states more and more have to commit legislation enforcement assets to battle the problem. Nonetheless, using cybercrime legislation and enforcements can limit freedom of speech. As a consequence, states threat complicating important cooperation on the worldwide stage in addition to threat de-legitimizing cybercrime legislation and enforcement (Owen, Noble, & Pace, 2017). With the growing requirement for enforcement to frustrate hackers, with out which the social and financial probabilities of the web might properly falter, using “cybercrime” as a tag for proscribing speech and regulating content material might solely result in the dilution of Help, diversion of assets, and complicate international cooperation.
There are gaps within the laws. As an example, some federal and state legal guidelines lack laws on safety threat assessments. As such, there is no such thing as a normal approach of conducting these assessments. Legal guidelines on info dealing with are absent. Subsequently, organizations are usually not in a position to comprehend and guard the information they’ve. Incident planning and response is one other matter of concern. Federal insurance policies don’t clearly spell out the form of response plans organizations ought to comply with after safety breach (Kosseff, 2017). On this case, firms undertake methods they imagine will Help them handle the breach finest. Potential options embody enacting federal and state legal guidelines that clearly outline the sorts of safety assessments to hold out and figuring out and establishing a regular approach of doing the assessments. Different options ought to give attention to offering pointers on info dealing with.
Advice
I like to recommend correct encryption and utilization of salt person passwords. Below Armor made the error of hashing a portion of the customers’ passwords using the infamously hackable SHA-1 perform. Subsequently, with the intention to correctly guard the passwords and meet the safety necessities of the Basic Information Safety Regulation, there may be the necessity to make the most of a vigorous hashing perform and salting the passwords of customers. Though bcrypt is powerful, it’s breakable. The cyberattack on Ashley Madison concerned over 30 million passwords which have been hashed using bcrypt.
Conclusion
Clearly, cyber crime is changing into a infamous within the 21st century. Extra and extra firms have gotten victims of cyberattacks. Below Armor seems to be one of many newest victims in these hacks. Though the corporate had took stringent measures to guard the information of its clients, hackers nonetheless discovered a approach to compromise its purchasers’ information. This requires federal and state governments to tighten their belts in addressing this difficulty by way of formulation of insurance policies and enforcement of legal guidelines.

References
Kosseff, J. (2017). Cybersecurity legislation. Hoboken: Wiley.
Lucas, G. R. (2017). Ethics and cyber warfare: The hunt for accountable safety within the age
of digital warfare. Hershey, Pa: IGI World.
Nemati, H. R. (2008). Info safety and ethics: Ideas, methodologies, instruments and
functions. Hershey PA: Info Science Reference.
Owen, T., Noble, W., & Pace, F. C. (2017). New views on cybercrime. Springer
Worldwide Publishing AG.
Shaban, H. (2018). Below Armour broadcasts information breach, affecting 150 million MyFitnessPal app accounts. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/information/the-switch/wp/2018/03/29/under-armour-announces-data-breach-affecting-150-million-myfitnesspal-app-accounts/?utm_term=.27e5edf59c8c
Vermaat, M. E., Sebok, S. L., Freund, S. M., Campbell, J. T., Frydenberg, M., and Ly, A.
(2016). Discovering computer systems 2016: Digital Expertise, information, and units. Boston, MA:Cengage Studying.

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