Tatiana Siegel reports that there have been “at least a half-dozen extortion attempts against Hollywood firms over the past six months alone, say sources in the cybersecurity industry.” And things are so bad, it seems, that: The frequency of the attacks has overwhelmed the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, which has been unable to properly…
Category: Hack
Walnut Place notifies patients of ransomware attack
From their press release: On March 13, 2017, LCS-WP LLC d/b/a Walnut Place (“Walnut Place”) leadership discovered that some of its systems had been infected with ransomware (a type of computer malware that encrypts files). Walnut Place’s investigation has revealed that the ransomware began affecting its systems on or around January 25, 2017 and was…
Chinese Hackers Must Pay $8.9 Million for Law Firm Data Theft
There’s an update to a case previously noted on this site. Bob Van Voris reports: Three Chinese hackers who traded on data they stole from two top New York law firms were ordered by a judge to pay $8.9 million. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan on May 5 fined the men and ordered…
Company Awarded Damages After Former Employee Hacks Its Systems and Hijacks Its Website
Michael Bertoncini writes: A company can recover damages from its former employee in connection with his hacking into its payroll system to inflate his pay, accessing its proprietary files without authorization and hijacking its website, a federal court ruled. Tyan, Inc. v. Yovan Garcia, Case No. CV 15-05443- MWF (JPRx) (C.D. Cali. May 2, 2017). The…
Diamond Institute for Infertility and Menopause notifies patients after hack
Diamond Institute for Infertility and Menopause in New Jersey recently started notifying patients of an incident involving their electronic health records server, maintained by an unnamed third party. In a letter to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, Diamond’s external counsel wrote: On February 27, 2017, Diamond discovered that an unknown individual had gained access to the…
Confluence charter school servers are hacked
Kristen Taketa reports: The network servers for Confluence Charter Schools in St. Louis were hacked over the weekend, but school leadership say they have no evidence yet that student or employee data were compromised. The hacking has affected the schools’ emails, phones, student information system and payroll system, CEO Candice Carter-Oliver said in a statement…