Grace Macrae reports: China has opened another front against India with sustained cyber attacks targeting government websites and banking systems. The Chinese DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks have targeted information websites and the country’s financial payments system. DDOS attacks are malicious attempts to overwhelm a network by flooding it with artificially created internet traffic….
Category: Government Sector
OR: Keizer city computers hacked and ransomed for $48,000
Eric A. Howald reports: The city of Keizer’s computer system was hacked on Wednesday, June 10, and officials were only able to regain access to the data by paying the perpetrators a $48,000 ransom. At this point, no sensitive data appears to have been accessed or misused. Read more on The Keizer Times.
If you’re despairing at staff sharing admin passwords, look on the bright side. That’s CIA-grade security
Shaun Nichols reports: The CIA was so focused on developing whizzbang exploit code, it left any thought of basic computer security principles on the kitchen counter before dashing off to work each morning. That oversight led to the super-agency inadvertently spilling its hacking tools ultimately into the hands of WikiLeaks, which duly disclosed details of the spies’…
Lessons learned from the ANPR data leak that shook Britain
Ax Sharma reports: On April 28, 2020, The Register reported the massive Automatic Number-Plate Recognition (ANPR) system used by the Sheffield government authorities was leaking some 8.6 million driver records. An online ANPR dashboard responsible for managing the cameras, tracking license plate numbers and viewing vehicle images was left exposed on the internet, without any password or…
Ransomware victims keep paying, and ransomware groups keep growing
Graham Cluley writes: The City of Florence in northern Alabama has agreed to pay a ransom of US $300,000 worth of Bitcoin to hackers who compromised its computer systems and deployed ransomware. At an emergency meeting this week, the Florence City Council unanimously voted to give in to the extortionists’ demands and pay the cybercriminals…
Russia says Germany has not provided any evidence of Bundestag hack
Earlier this week, I linked to an item stating that Germany is urging its fellow European Union governments to impose the bloc’s first-ever sanctions for hacking. The incident involved Dmitri Badin, a Russian suspect in the 2015 cyberattack on the German parliament. Catalin Cimpanu subsequently reported: Russian officials said this week that German authorities have…