Jonathan Greig reports: Public schools in two Michigan counties are reopening on Thursday after a ransomware attack crippled their ability to function and closed doors to students for three days. All of the public schools in Jackson and Hillsdale counties announced their reopening on Thursday in letters to parents, assuring them that cybersecurity experts, tech officials…
Category: Malware
TX: Dallas Central Appraisal District Systems Still Down a Week After Ransomware Attack
Jacob Vaughn reports: The website, servers and email for the Dallas Central Appraisal District, or DCAD, have been inaccessible after the entire system was attacked by hackers last week. DCAD, which appraises Dallas County properties for tax purposes, announced early last week on social media that it was the victim of a ransomware attack, and it…
Medibank defends decision to not pay hackers ransom for stolen data as it contacts 480,000 customers
Nassim Khadem and Daniel Ziffer report: Medibank’s boss says the company will begin directly communicating with nearly half a million customers whose health data is believed to have been stolen, weeks after it first became aware hackers had breached its customer database. Medibank’s chief executive David Koczkar said the company had today started communicating with…
Worok hackers hide new malware in PNGs, while ARCrypter ransomware expands reach from Latam to world
Two reports related to malware: Bill Toulas reports: A threat group tracked as ‘Worok’ hides malware within PNG images to infect victims’ machines with information-stealing malware without raising alarms. This has been confirmed by researchers at Avast, who built upon the findings of ESET, the first to spot and report on Worok’s activity in early…
MI: Ransomware attack responsible for shutdown affecting Jackson, Hillsdale schools
Martin Slagter reports: Jackson County Intermediate School District officials took network systems offline after technology staff determined suspicious activity to be the result of a “ransomware incident.” Public school districts in both counties canceled classes Monday, Nov. 14, with the system outage impacting a wide range of building operations including but not limited to heating,…
CO: Salud Family Health breached in September, leaked in November
On October 5, Salud Family Health in Colorado notified HHS of a breach, but only provided a “marker” of 501 affected. On November 4, they provided notice that said the types of information that might have been accessed or taken included in a cyberattack included: patients’ name, Social Security number, driver’s license number or Colorado…