Bradley Barth reports: A proposed California legislation imposing specific penalties for ransomware took a step forward yesterday when the state senate’s Public Safety Committee passed the bill at a hearing that featured testimony from Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (HPMC) — a notable victim of the ongoing ransomware epidemic. The legislation, Senate Bill 1137, would amend California’s penal code making it…
Category: Malware
New defense in Russian’s hacking case requests another delay to go through piles of evidence
Rick Anderson has an update on the prosecution of accused Russian hacker Roman Seleznev, and you’ll want to read it. Oh, the defense needing more time to prepare is not particularly exciting, however expected, but it’s all the other details about the case in Anderson’s report that you’ll want to read. Here’s a snippet: Seleznev, who Russian…
TX: Ransomware attacks 20 Northeast ISD schools
KENS reports: The Northeast Independent School District says it’s been hit by the latest craze in computer viruses known as ransomware. It is a type of malware or virus that limits users from accessing parts of their system, typically forcing the victim to pay some type of ransom in order to get their data back….
MedStar: Ransomware success wasn’t IT department’s fault
Sean Gallagher reports that MedStar is firmly denying others’ reporting about their recent ransomware attack: Tami Abdollah of the Associated Press reported Tuesday that an anonymous source “familiar with the investigation” of the cyberattack claimed that the flaws that allowed attackers to compromise a JBoss Web application server and attack the network with Samsam crypto-ransomware had…
King’s Daughters’ Health shut down systems after Locky detected.
On March 30, they wrote: Exercising an abundance of caution, computer systems at King’s Daughters’ Health were intentionally shut down on Wednesday morning after a single-user’s files were infected with a ransomware virus known as Locky. At this time, all patient data remains secure and has not been affected or compromised, according to Linda Darnell,…
TX: Alto city office battles ransomware issue
Ransomware continues to hit smaller entities and not just big hospital systems. Jo Anne Embleton reports: Being struck by a software virus is every computer user’s worst fear, including Alto city officials, who are now having to deal with the aftermath of a ransomware virus. Earlier this month, the city utilities office was hit by…