Ted Kobus, a partner at BakerHostetler was interviewed this week in a podcast on ransomware. Ted had this to say, among other things: Ted Kobus: So approximately 25% of the incidents we worked on in 2019 involved ransomware. We love to talk about how 2020 is the year that you fill in the blank. But…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Mount Locker ransomware now targets your TurboTax tax returns
Lawrence Abrams reports: The Mount Locker ransomware operation is gearing up for the tax season by specifically targeting TurboTax returns for encryption. Mount Locker is a relatively new ransomware operation that began infecting victims in July 2020. Like other human-operated ransomware gangs, the Mount Locker gang will compromise networks, harvest unencrypted files to be used for…
Under the radar: more attacks on healthcare entities
The attacks on the medical sector continue, although not all get a lot of media coverage. This week, DataBreaches.net noted the Alamance Skin Center ransomware breach which had left the medical entity with unrecoverable data on 100,000 patients. I get a knot in my stomach just thinking about breaches like that one. Today, DataBreaches.net notes…
Ongoing Data Breach Dispute Underscores Emerging Legal Issues in Data Privacy Litigation
Aaron C. Garavaglia of Squire Patton Boggs writes: From consumers and merchants to financial institutions and investors, fraud is a global problem that damages healthy economic growth. Two sobering statistics illustrate that as the world has become more connected, fraud has only proliferated. In 2001, the FTC received 137,306 reports of fraud. In 2019, that number increased…
Trump fires DHS cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs
Amanda Macias reports: President Donald Trump announced Tuesday on Twitter that he has “terminated” top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs. In a pair of tweets, Trump said that Krebs gave a “highly inaccurate” statement about the security of the 2020 presidential election. Trump, who has not yet conceded to president-elect Joe Biden, alleged that the election was…
Ransomware Operator Promotes Distributed Storage for Stolen Data
Jai Vijayan reports: News last week about a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation called DarkSide setting up a distributed storage system in Iran for storing data stolen from victims of its attacks could mean big trouble for organizations. If the model proves successful, other ransomware operators are likely to implement similar systems, making it even harder for…