Paul Thompson reports: The Travis Central Appraisal District has been malfunctioning for about a week after it was hit by a cyberattack on Sept. 11. The agency on Sept. 19 confirmed the attack. Chief Appraiser Marya Crigler said in a statement its computer systems were attacked at 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. The attack affected…
Category: Malware
Ca: Stratford paid more than $75,000 in Bitcoin following cyber attack
Galen Simmons reports: More than five months after the City of Stratford announced it had been the target of a ransomware cyber attack on April 14, officials announced Thursday that the city paid more than $75,000 in Bitcoins as ransom to the attacker. Read more on The Beacon Herald.
Tortoiseshell Group Targets IT Providers in Saudi Arabia in Probable Supply Chain Attacks
Symantec reports: A previously undocumented attack group is using both custom and off-the-shelf malware to target IT providers in Saudi Arabia in what appear to be supply chain attacks with the end goal of compromising the IT providers’ customers. The group, which we are calling Tortoiseshell, has been active since at least July 2018. Symantec…
Ransomware attack against Ava School District fails, prompts strengthening of network
KY3 in Missouri reports: Ransom notes mysteriously shot out of printers in the Ava School District, demanding money to get information back. The district shut down its network as a precaution. Ava’s Superintendent doesn’t think a Ransomeware attack that hit early Thursday morning got any important data. Read more on KY3. It’s interesting to read…
Gootkit malware crew left their database exposed online without a password
Catalin Cimpanu reports: The criminal gang behind the Gootkit malware has made the same mistake that thousands of legitimate companies have made before them in the past years — they left MongoDB databases connected to the internet without a password. The leak allowed security researcher Bob Diachenko to download all group’s data and gain an…
The New Target That Enables Ransomware Hackers to Paralyze Dozens of Towns and Businesses at Once
Renee Dudley of ProPublica reports: On July 3, employees at Arbor Dental in Longview, Washington, noticed glitches in their computers and couldn’t view X-rays. Arbor was one of dozens of dental clinics in Oregon and Washington stymied by a ransomware attack that disrupted their business and blocked access to patients’ records. But the hackers didn’t…