Partners HealthCare System, whose hospitals include Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, revealed today that it had discovered a malware attack in May, 2017 that may have exposed 2,600 patients’ information. They learned of the problem on May 8, but because data was mixed in with code, numbers, other data, and unformatted, it took them quite…
Category: Malware
Data stealing hacking tool “Luminosity Link” taken out of use: National Crime Agency
A cyber hacking tool that allowed criminals to take full control of victims’ machines is no longer available after an operation co-ordinated by the National Crime Agency. The Luminosity Link RAT (a Remote Access Trojan) enabled hackers to connect to a victim’s machine undetected. They could then disable anti-virus and anti-malware software, carry out commands…
Spain Extradites Russian Hacker Allegedly Implicated in Kelihos To New Haven
Edmund H. Mahony reports: Spain on Friday turned over notorious Russian computer hacker Peter Yuryevich Levashov to FBI cyber detectives in New Haven, who have accused him of developing the Kelihos network of hundreds of thousands of infected computers and using it to stuff inboxes with spam, steal secret financial data and spew malicious programming…
SC:Spartanburg Co. libraries hit by ransomware attack
Damn. Some will likely call this a training #FAIL, , but it’s still sad/frustrating. WSPA reports: Spartanburg County Public Libraries confirmed Tuesday night that they suffered a ransomware attack Monday morning impacting the library system’s ability to check out books. Spartanburg County Librarian Todd Stephens said access to the system’s computers and wireless have been…
HHS OCR January 2018 OCR Cybersecurity Newsletter: Cyber Extortion
January 30, 2018 Incidents of cyber extortion have risen steadily over the past couple of years and, by many estimates, will continue to be a major source of disruption for many organizations. Cyber extortion can take many forms, but it typically involves cybercriminals’ demanding money to stop (or in some cases, to merely delay) their…
More than half of ransomware victims hit at least twice
Tony Morbin reports: New research on ransomware by Sophos reveals that the average total cost of an attack is US$ 133,000 (£94,000), including ransom, downtime, manpower, device cost, network cost, and lost opportunities – but for the top five percent most impacted organisations, costs were US$1.3 million to US$6.6 million (£900,000 to £4.7 million). More…