Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement with Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, a not-for-profit community hospital located in Yakima, Washington resolving an investigation under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). OCR investigated allegations that several security guards from Yakima Valley Memorial…
Author: Dissent
Russian National Arrested and Charged with Conspiring to Commit LockBit Ransomware Attacks Against U.S. and Foreign Businesses
The Justice Department today announced charges against a Russian national for his involvement in deploying numerous LockBit ransomware and other cyberattacks against victim computer systems in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Africa. Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov (АСТАМИРОВ, Руслан Магомедовичь), 20, of Chechen Republic, will make his initial appearance later today. “This Lockbit-related arrest, the second…
State governments among victims of MoveIT Transfer breach
Alexander Culafi reports: Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri state governments are among a growing list of organizations attacked via a critical flaw in Progress Software’s MoveIT Transfer product. Progress Software on May 31 detailed an SQL injection bug in its managed file transfer (MFT) software MoveIt Transfer. Progress urged customers to immediately apply mitigations for the…
Court unseals long-awaited election security reports
Analysis by Tim Starks with research by David DiMolfetta: A long-awaited report on the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of election machines in Georgia was finally released alongside another report on Wednesday, but the two sides of a long-running dispute over the security of the state’s election machines can’t agree on what conclusions to draw. The first report — by University…
City of Augusta, GA data theft “one of the largest government data thefts in recent years in U.S.” — SuspectFile
Marco A. De Felice of SuspectFile writes: This article will serve to retrace, documenting them, the various steps that led us to have an exchange of numerous emails with the BlackByte ransomware group. We will tell, through a series of data, what damage the computer attack and the consequent theft of documents caused to the…
Understanding Ransomware Threat Actors: LockBit
Alert Code AA23-165A CISA has posted an advisory on LockBit. SUMMARY In 2022, LockBit was the most deployed ransomware variant across the world and continues to be prolific in 2023. Since January 2020, affiliates using LockBit have attacked organizations of varying sizes across an array of critical infrastructure sectors, including financial services, food and agriculture,…