March 2020

Marriott’s Second Breach: 5.2 Million Guest Records Exposed

Post author:Prabhu Kalyan Samal
Post published:March 31, 2020
Post category:Identity & Phishing Security

At the end of March 2020, Marriott disclosed its second major breach in two years: the login credentials of two franchise properties had been abused in late February 2020 to siphon 5.2 million guest records, including names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, loyalty details, and in some cases travel itineraries and room preferences. Unlike the 2018 Starwood catastrophe that exposed up to 383 million records, this intrusion was caught and contained within weeks, but it reignited regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. This retrospective covers the intrusion path, the data involved, the disclosure timing, and the aftermath for one of hospitality's biggest names.

When Hackers Hunted the WHO: Cyberattacks in a Pandemic’s First Weeks

Post author:Prabhu Kalyan Samal
Post published:March 24, 2020
Post category:Identity & Phishing Security

On 24 March 2020, Reuters reported that hackers had stood up a near-identical malicious imitation of the World Health Organization's internal email portal, infrastructure aimed at stealing passwords from staffers coordinating the global pandemic response. The same reporting documented that around 450 active WHO email addresses and passwords, plus thousands more belonging to people working on the COVID-19 response, had been leaked online. It was not an isolated incident but part of a documented surge in targeting of health bodies that spring. This piece reconstructs the verified incidents of March 2020 and the wider lesson that crisis response organizations are priority intelligence targets.

The FBI’s COVID-19 Warning: IC3 and the Scam Surge of March 2020

Post author:Prabhu Kalyan Samal
Post published:March 20, 2020
Post category:Identity & Phishing Security

On 20 March 2020, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center published a public service announcement warning that cyber criminals were exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic at scale: phishing lures referencing stimulus payments and fake cures, malicious apps, and infrastructure spoofing health authorities. It was one node in a broader wave of official guidance that spring, with CISA and the UK's NCSC issuing joint advice on pandemic-era remote work and video conferencing security, and IC3's later reporting would show complaint volumes surging through 2020. This retrospective explains what the warning said, what the threat landscape actually looked like that spring, and how a global crisis became an attack-surface multiplier.

SMBGhost CVE-2020-0796: Wormable Code in Windows 10 SMBv3

Post author:Prabhu Kalyan Samal
Post published:March 11, 2020
Post category:Cloud & Infrastructure Security

On 11 March 2020, Microsoft shipped a fix for CVE-2020-0796, a wormable remote code execution flaw in how Windows 10 and Windows Server handle compressed SMBv3 packets. An attacker could send a specially crafted compressed packet and trigger a buffer overflow before authentication, exactly the class of bug security people fear could be chained into self-spreading malware. Researchers named it SMBGhost, published proof-of-concepts within days, demonstrated local privilege escalation chains, and Microsoft followed with an out-of-band patch update on 12 March. This technical retrospective covers the flaw mechanics, the compression workaround, the patch wave, and why the wormable nightmare never fully materialized.