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Information commissioner wants immediate end to the practice
Category Archives: News
Conti ransomware explained: What you need to know about this aggressive criminal group
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Conti has been one of the most aggressive ransomware operations over the past two years and continues to victimize many large companies as well as government, law enforcement and healthcare organizations. Researchers warn that unlike other ransomware groups that generally care about their reputation, Conti doesn’t always deliver on its promises to victims.
“Usually, the more successful ransomware operators put a lot of effort into establishing and maintaining some semblance of ‘integrity’ as a way of facilitating ransom payments from victims,” researchers from Palo Alto Networks said in an analysis. “They want to establish stellar reputations for ‘customer service’ and for delivering on what they promise—that if you pay a ransom, your files will be decrypted (and they will not appear on a leak website). Yet in our experience helping clients remediate attacks, Conti has not demonstrated any signs that it cares about its reputation with would-be victims.”
5 top deception tools and how they ensnare attackers
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Security-savvy organizations understand that it’s best to assume that their systems are breached. It’s one reason why zero-trust architectures get so much attention nowadays, and it’s why more enterprises have threat hunters who go on the lookout for attackers that are already active on their networks.
This practice has grown popular because threats have become so pervasive, and traditional intrusion detection/prevention systems dispatch too many false positives. They can be too easy to circumvent. Still, threat hunters can’t catch everything, and there are not enough people with these skills to go around. So, where do security teams go to get some relief? More are turning to active defense, or deception technologies, to help identify attacker movement within their systems.
Turkish Airline Exposes Flight and Crew Info in 6.5TB Leak
Hacker steals Verizon employee database after tricking worker into granting remote access
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A database of contact information for hundreds of Verizon employees is in the hands of cybercriminals, after a member of staff was duped into granting a hacker access to their work PC.
Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.
Anonymous Claims Attacks Against Belarus for Involvement in Russian Invasion of Ukraine
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Several ministry websites shut down by Anonymous affiliates in retaliation for Belarus’ support of Russia’s Ukrainian invasion.
US Academic Credentials Displayed in Public and Dark Web Forums
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Credentials from several US-based universities and colleges have been spotted by the FBI in Russian cyber-criminal forums
Follina. Unpatched Microsoft Office zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild
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The world is waiting for a patch from Microsoft, after a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Office was found to be being exploited in boobytrapped Word documents to remotely execute code on victims’ PCs.
How Costa Rica found itself at war over ransomware
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Costa Rica’s newly-elected president has declared a national state of emergency, as its ongoing crisis costs the nation an estimated USD $38 million a day.
Perhaps in a different time, we would assumed the country had been struck by a devasting natural disaster or was struggling with some internal conflict—but times have changed. Costa Rica has been struck not by an earthquake or a bomb or a strike, but by a new national crisis: cybercrime.
Handling cyberattacks has become an everyday activity of every nation on the planet, as they try to navigate the “wild west” of the modern internet. Nation-states, for-profit cybercrime syndicates, political activists, and determined pranksters trawl the web every hour of every day, looking for their next victim. And what better victim than a nation’s government network? Government networks and systems are loaded with resources and information, including personal data that is vital for federal and civilian operations. At the same time, they are often behind the curve on security best practices, making government websites and systems prime targets.