Luke Irwin writes: A Canadian organization has reportedly paid criminals $425,000 in bitcoin after its systems were crippled in a ransomware attack. The claim comes from Daniel Tobok, CEO of forensic firm Cytelligence, which he says is helping with the investigation. Tobok, speaking to IT World Canada, didn’t name the affected company, but said unpatched…
Category: Business Sector
No Harm, No Lawsuit: Court Dismisses VTech Litigation
In November, 2015, this site noted a breach involving VTech. At the time, Motherboard reported: The hacked data includes names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents who have bought products sold by VTech, which has almost $2 billion in revenue. The dump also includes the first names, genders and birthdays of more than 200,000 kids….
WestJet says some rewards members’ profile data leaked online
CBC News reports: WestJet says it is working with police in Calgary and the RCMP cybercrime unit after some members’ profile data was disclosed online. The airline said in a news release Friday night that profile data of some WestJet Rewards members was disclosed online “by an unauthorized third party.” The Calgary-based airline says no credit card or banking information was…
Seagate To Settle Phishing Scam With $5.75M In-Kind Deal
Seagate was one of many companies whose employee W-2 data were phished in 2016. In September 2016, the employees sued over the incident. Now Dave Simpson reports that the suit has a tentative settlement: Seagate Technologies LLC has agreed to a settlement that includes services valued at $5.75 million to end a proposed class action…
Microsoft opens up a new front in the battle against Fancy Bear
John E. Dunn reports: Can anyone – or anything – take on well-resourced nation state hacking groups? Protected by anonymity and plausible deniability, conventional wisdom says not, but conventional wisdom ignores a company like Microsoft wielding a secret weapon with the power to hinder even the cleverest hacking group: lawyers. This, it has emerged, is…
45,000 Facebook Users Leave One-Star Ratings After Hacker’s Unjust Arrest
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Over 45,000 users have left one-star reviews on a company’s Facebook page after the business reported a security researcher to police and had him arrested in the middle of the night instead of fixing a reported bug. The arrest took place this week in Hungary after an 18-year-old found a flaw in…