TORONTO —
As a recent breach of 5,500 accounts with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has shown, personal hygiene isn’t the only thing Canadians need to worry about during this pandemic.
According to Ritesh Kotak, a digital technology expert, it’s important to keep up with your “cyber hygiene” as well to ensure you don’t become a victim of digital fraud.
The CRA temporarily suspended its online services on the weekend in response to the cyberattack. The agency, which has been used by thousands of Canadians during the pandemic to apply for the $2,000-per-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) for COVID-19, said the attack was a “credential stuffing” scheme.
One victim told the Canadian Press that someone who had hacked into her account applied for CERB in her name and received funds by using her information.
But what is “credential stuffing”? And how can Canadians stay safe?
“A credential is a username and password, and stuffing is when, essentially you have these usernames and passwords and you test them against very popular sites,” Kotak told CTV News.
Hackers who have acquired hundreds of usernames and passwords will turn to bots to see if the account details allow them access to anything.
“This bot will actually go out, and it will try to input your username and password into popular sites, and if there’s a match, then the fraudster gets notified,” Kotak said.
“So the big question is, how do these hackers even get your username and password? And the most common way is through other breaches.”
If financial institutions, hotels, airlines or any place you have given your information, get hacked, that personal information, such as a username, an email address and a password, can now be accessed and shared, Kotak explained.
“And if you’re re-using your username and password, you now become vulnerable to these types of attacks.”
If the login you’ve used to book a hotel that suffers a breach is the same as your login for your bank account, or another account that contains banking details on it, these hackers can gain access to an extraordinary amount of data.
“Once you get access to somebody’s account, it is whatever information is available on that account, you now have access to it,” Kotak said. “So it could be your personal information, your financial information, your previous returns, essentially anything. And once you’re in, you can also change up information, such as your mailing address or email address to make it even more difficult for the rightful owner to gain access back to their account.”
With this recent breach on the CRA, Kotak said it seems that the hackers were purely “after the money.”
“It seems that the motivation behind these breaches is strictly financial. It is to get as much money in a short amount of time as possible, without getting detected.”
‘BASIC CYBER HYGIENE’
Much like with guarding against COVID-19, the strategies you can use to avoid becoming the victim of a “credential stuffing” plot are as simple as putting on a mask or washing your hands.
Just use different passwords and usernames, Kotak says.
“It is convenient for us to use the same username and password,” he admitted. “We have maybe a hundred different accounts online, we have our email, we have data storage, we might have our food delivery apps, so we have a lot of different apps that all require usernames and passwords. And as a result, a lot of us kind of get a little bit lazy.
“Let this be a lesson on why it is important to have different usernames and passwords for different sites, so if a breach does occur, you will not be affected.”
Kotak calls it “basic cyber hygiene to have different usernames and passwords.” He emphasized that creating “strong passwords” which mix upper and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols, and avoid using “dictionary words” is also important.
However, he said the blame is not on just one person for these types of breaches.
There are other parties involved, such as the CRA, and other financial institutions, which are responsible for putting in fraud detection mechanisms to catch these schemes early on.
“This is joint responsibility,” he said. “As users, use different usernames and passwords. As the CRA, or any government entity, ensure that you put proper security measures in place, and you use some sort of anomaly detection, and same thing with these financial institutions. If we all take these steps, then these types of breaches are preventable.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
