Shaun Nichols reports: The massive amounts of exposed data on misconfigured AWS S3 storage buckets is a catastrophic network breach just waiting to happen, say experts. The team at Truffle Security says its automated search tools were able to stumble across some 4,000 open Amazon S3 buckets that included data companies would not want public, things like…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Netwalker ransomware earned $25 million in just five months
Lawrence Abrams reports: The Netwalker ransomware operation has generated a total of $25 million in ransom payments since March 1st according to a new report by McAfee. Netwalker is a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation that began operating in late 2019, where affiliates are enlisted to distribute the ransomware and infect victims in return for a 60-70% cut of ransom payments….
Cyber insurance: The moral quandary of paying criminals who stole your data
Asha Barbaschow reports: Earlier this year, a club with around 70,000 members found itself in a pickle: Pay a ransom or risk the personal information of those members being exposed. In this scenario, the club paid the ransomware. It was decided that the financial hit of paying outstripped the reputational harm to that business. They…
Coronavirus: Iran cover-up of deaths revealed by data leak
BBC reports: The number of deaths from coronavirus in Iran is nearly triple what Iran’s government claims, a BBC Persian service investigation has found. The government’s own records appear to show almost 42,000 people died with Covid-19 symptoms up to 20 July, versus 14,405 reported by its health ministry. The number of people known to…
More data breaches from ransomware attacks in Australia
Aaron Tan reports: Ransomware attacks were one of the top causes of data breaches in Australia during the first half of this year, according to the latest statistics report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). According to the report, the number of data breaches caused by ransomware rose from 13 in the previous…
IBM Security 2020 Cost of Data Breach Report Shows 10% Annual Increase in Healthcare Data Breach Costs
HIPAA Journal reports on the newly released IBM study: The 2020 Cost of Data Breach Report from IBM Security has been released and reveals there has been a slight reduction in global data breach costs, falling to $3.86 million per breach from $3.92 million in 2019 – A reduction of 1.5%. There was considerable variation in data…