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…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
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…
Egregor threat actors pose risk to medical and dental entities
While some ransomware threat actors claim that they will not attack medical entities, others have not made any such pledge. In “Without Undue Delay,” DataBreaches.net noted that Egregor ransomware threat actors had added Dyras Dental in Michigan to their leak site in September. As I reported in that paper: The data dumped by the attackers as…
Ransomware-as-a-service: The pandemic within a pandemic
Intel 471 released a new article today that is significant for shining some light into some otherwise murky areas. They write, in part: Intel 471 has been tracking over 25 different ransomware-as-a-service crews over the past year, ranging from well-known groups that have become synonymous with ransomware, to newly-formed variants that have risen from the…
Commentary: ‘You may be hacked’ and other things doctors should tell you
Maximilian Kiener is Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. And while I have been blogging about the need to promptly disclose to patients when patient data has been acquired or dumped by threat actors, Kiener has been writing about the need for doctors to expand our concept of what constitutes the kind…
Consumer Watchdog Hacks A Tesla to Prove Dangers of Wirelessly Connected Cars
Jamie Court reports: The nonprofit, nonpartisan Consumer Watchdog today released a video showing how a box it built with the help of technologists could hack into the wireless connection of a Tesla and take over the screen with a “This Tesla’s Been Hacked” message. The video can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/RgpmJ6OhPns The group said the demonstration…