Ian Duncan and Christine Zhang report: Officials in the eastern North Carolina city of Greenville arrived to work one morning in early April to find the files on some 800 of their computers locked up. More than five weeks later, they’re still recovering from the debilitating cyberattack. The city of around 92,000 realized April 10…
Category: Malware
Firms That Promised High-Tech Ransomware Solutions Almost Always Just Pay the Hackers
Renee Dudley and Jeff Kao report that two firms that advertised technology solutions to responding to ransomware incidents — Proven Data Recovery of Elmsford, New York and Florida-based MonsterCloud – were really just paying ransom to the attackers. Read more on ProPublica. I suspect that ransom payments have been the dirty little secret for the…
GozNym malware: cybercriminal network dismantled in international operation
A press release from Europol today: An unprecedented, international law enforcement operation has dismantled a complex, globally operating and organised cybercrime network. The criminal network used GozNym malware in an attempt to steal an estimated $100 million from more than 41 000 victims, primarily businesses and their financial institutions. A criminal Indictment returned by a…
OKCPS confirms ransomware cyber-attack
Lili Zheng reports: Oklahoma City Public Schools have confirmed they are addressing a recent ransomware attack, compromising the district’s network. On Monday, OKCPS stated their network was “significantly compromised by a form of malware” and that the issue was “continuing to worsen.” Early Tuesday evening, an updated statement from the district confirmed that ‘form’ of…
WhatsApp urges users to upgrade app after security breach
Steven Scheer reports: Facebook’s WhatsApp urged users to upgrade to the latest version of its popular messaging app after reporting that users might be vulnerable to having malicious spyware installed on phones without their knowledge. […] Earlier, the Financial Times (FT) reported that a vulnerability in WhatsApp allowed attackers to inject spyware on phones by ringing…
Hackers are collecting payment details, user passwords from 4,600 sites
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Hackers have breached analytics service Picreel and open-source project Alpaca Forms and have modified JavaScript files on the infrastructure of these two companies to embed malicious code on over 4,600 websites, security researchers have told ZDNet. The attack is ongoing, and the malicious scripts are still live, at the time of this…