Sam Wildman reports that a Wellingborough, U.K. man who has been linked to TheDarkOverlord has been sentenced to jail for three years, but for crimes that do not unequivocally appear to be the work of the blackhat hacking collective. “Crafty Cockney,” whose real name is Nathan Wyatt, had pleaded guilty in September to 20 counts…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Google: Our hunt for hackers reveals phishing is far deadlier than data breaches
Liam Tung reports: Google has released the results of a year-long investigation into Gmail account hijacking, which finds that phishing is far riskier for users than data breaches, because of the additional information phishers collect. Hardly a week goes by without a new data breach being discovered, exposing victims to account hijacking if they used…
Cracking the Code
Jason Leopold reports: One late morning in May 2016, the leaders of the Democratic National Committee huddled around a packed conference table and stared at Robert Johnston. The former Marine Corps captain gave his briefing with unemotional military precision, but what he said was so unnerving that a high-level DNC official curled up in a…
Charities unprepared for cyber attack risk
Recently, in an encrypted chat, a spokesperson for TheDarkOverlord (TDO) commented to me how their attack on Little Red Door in Indiana is still getting media attention. Not surprisingly to me, attacking a charity that helps cancer patients seemed to generate a particularly strong emotional response among members of the pubic. Well, that and threatening…
Researchers Question Previous Health Data Breach Study
Elizabeth Snell reports: Claiming that larger healthcare facilities have a higher risk of experiencing a health data breach “neglects inherent biases in data collection and reporting practices,” according to a letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Vanderbilt University researchers Daniel Fabbri, PhD, Mark E. Frisse, MD, and Bradley Malin, PhD, wrote a letter to the editor in response…
MA: EMTs, paramedics may not know personal information is posted online
Boston25 News reported this last week: A state database reveals personal information about some health care workers, who say they’re worried about potential violence following them home. Bob St. Martin is a paramedic who made a troubling discovery earlier this month when he found a link to download his personal information online. “We have to…