Aaron Boyd reports: The Education Department is rolling out new rules for accessing and handling agency data by third parties—including students, parents and loan companies—with updated criminal penalties for anyone not following the new statutes. The new rules intend to bring the department into compliance with the 2019 Stop Student Debt Relief Scams Act and…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
New .avos2 variant: AvosLocker affiliate extorts $ 85k from victim thanks to old vulnerability in FortiGate VPN
Marco A. De Felice reports: An affiliate of the AvosLocker ransomware group extorts $ 85,000 in bitcoin from a company thanks to a known vulnerability in FortiGate VPN ( CVE-2018-13379 ). A vulnerability that the American multinational had corrected THANKS TO AN UPDATE released IN NOVEMBER 2019 . Those who have not updated their systems are a small company that…
Groove VS Babuk; Groove Ransom Manifesto & RAMP Underground Platform Secret
I’m not sure if you need to be a threat analyst, a drama critic, or a bit of both these days. But Yelisey Boguslavskiy & Anastasia Sentsova of AdvIntel dive in to some of the recent goings on: On September 7, 2021, a representative of the newly-formed Groove ransomware syndicate decided to share their insights…
United Nations’ Computers Breached by Hackers Earlier This Year – Resecurity
William Turton and Kartikay Mehrotra of Bloommberg report: Hackers breached the United Nations’ computer networks earlier this year and made off with a trove of data that could be used to target agencies within the intergovernmental organization. The hackers’ method for gaining access to the UN network appears to be unsophisticated: They likely got in…
REvil ransomware’s servers reappear without fanfare or explanation
Brett Callow of Emsisoft broke the unpleasant news on Twitter last night — REvil’s dedicated leak site, “The Happy Blog,” which had disappeared after the Kaseya supply chain attack, had reappeared at its old onion address. Unfortunately, the Happy Blog is back online #REvil pic.twitter.com/vMr9qTOht2 — Brett Callow (@BrettCallow) September 7, 2021 There were no…
Afghanistan becomes the primary target for ransomware attacks following Taliban takeover
Paul Skeldon reports; The recent Taliban takeover of the government in Afghanistan has brought a lot of chaos upon the nation – and cybercriminals are seeing that such disorder in the country is another chance for them to benefit. According to the Atlas VPN team data analysis, Afghanistan became the primary target for ransomware attacks worldwide in…