On March 15, this site noted that the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital had posted a notice about an IT security incident. At the time, they did not identify the incident as a ransomware incident. DataBreaches.net subsequently found some explanation for that notice — a listing on a Russian-language forum offering data from ETCH with numerous…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Microsoft on disrupting cyberattacks targeting Ukraine; Facebook on countering Ghostwriter’s attempts
Tom Burt , the Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft writes: Today, we’re sharing more about cyberattacks we’ve seen from a Russian nation-state actor targeting Ukraine and steps we’ve taken to disrupt it. We recently observed attacks targeting Ukrainian entities from Strontium, a Russian GRU-connected actor we have tracked for years. This…
Five ransomware groups, five victims… will it ever ease up?
The following is a snapshot of recent attacks on U.S. healthcare entities by ransomware teams. #1 First Choice Community Healthcare – Hive Hive threat actors have never sworn off attacking the healthcare sector. In addition to claiming that they attacked the Partnership HealthPlan of California on March 19 (an attack that has impacted PHPC’s functioning),…
Bank of Ireland fined €463,000 for data breaches
Brian O’Donovan reports: Bank of Ireland has been fined €463,000 by the Data Protection Commission for data breaches affecting more than 50,000 customers. It follows an inquiry into 22 personal data breach notifications that Bank of Ireland made to the Commission between 9 November 2018 and 27 June 2019. One of the data breach notifications…
Ransomware negotiations are taking longer (and that’s a good thing)
Joe Uchill reports: It’s taking longer to negotiate ransomware demands. That is a good thing. Law firm BakerHosteler, which handles more than 1,250 cyber-related incidents a year, said in its annual Data Security and Incident Response report that the typical ransomware negotiation for its clients in 2021 lasted eight days. That is roughly twice as long as…
The Original APT: Advanced Persistent Teenagers
Brian Krebs reports: Many organizations are already struggling to combat cybersecurity threats from ransomware purveyors and state-sponsored hacking groups, both of which tend to take days or weeks to pivot from an opportunistic malware infection to a full blown data breach. But few organizations have a playbook for responding to the kinds of virtual “smash…