Ionut Ilascu reports: Security researchers are warning that patching critical vulnerabilities allowing access to the network is insufficient to defend against ransomware attacks. Some gangs are exploiting the flaws to plan a backdoor while the window of opportunity exists and may return long after the victim applied the necessary security updates. One case is a…
Category: Malware
Ransomware attack exposes California transit giant’s sensitive data
Matt Kapko reports: A ransomware attack against San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit exposed highly sensitive and personal data after a threat group leaked the records Friday. The nation’s fifth-largest transit system by ridership, and largest in California, remains operational. Vice Society, a prolific ransomware group, claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday when it…
Guardian confirms it was hit by ransomware attack
Dan Milmo reports: The Guardian has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack in December and that the personal data of UK staff members has been accessed in the incident. The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, Anna Bateson, and the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, confirmed the news in an update emailed to staff on…
TX: West Oaks Eyecare discloses malware incident
On November 7, West Oaks Eyecare in Texas discovered one of their computer systems had been encrypted by malware. Their investigation into the incident indicated that the threat actor(s) may have accessed patient billing information: We thoroughly reviewed the files involved to determine what information they contained. Based on our review, we identified files that…
Captify’s Your Patient Advisor advises more than 244,000 consumers of payment card breach
Your Patient Advisor by Captify started notifying people in mid-December of a security breach that occurred in 2019 and continued for years. Captify Health (“Your Patient Advisor”) is an online retailer of colonoscopy preparation kits. In March of 2021, they were contacted about the fraudulent use of consumer credit cards potentially related to their payment…
When ransom negotiations become public, self-inflicted reputation harm may follow
Not all ransomware victims have given up on getting attackers to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), so they can call a ransom payment a “bug bounty” and never disclose that they were the victim of a ransomware incident. At least, that’s how it seems, unless, of course, CyberOptics is going to claim that they were…