Patricia Hurtado reports: A Russian who admitted creating a computer virus that infected more than 1 million computers worldwide was spared from additional prison time on top of the the three years he’s already spent locked up after U.S. prosecutors lauded his cooperation with their probe. Nikita Kuzmin, who was arrested in 2010 and pleaded…
Category: Malware
Is ransomware considered a health data breach under HIPAA?
Back in March, I blogged about the question as to whether a ransomware attack needed to be reported to HHS as a HIPAA breach. In that post, I quoted an HHS spokesperson who informed DataBreaches.net that a ransomware situation was an impermissible disclosure (because the attacker had access to the data even if the data weren’t…
‘Wizz’ kids: Talos researchers pinpoint French firm as source of spyware-adware threat
Bradley Barth reports: A supposedly legitimate French software firm, Tuto4PC, has actually infected an estimated 12 million PC users with a generic trojan disguised as downloadable utilities programs, according to an in-depth analysis from Cisco’s Talos research division. The so-called utilities software creates a backdoor on infected machines to automatically deliver payloads with spyware and adware capabilities, explained blog post authors and researchers Warren Mercer…
Toymaker’s website pushes ransomware that holds visitors’ files hostage
Infecting site visitors with malware cannot be good for business. Their PR department must be going nuts over this one…. Dan Goodin reports: The website belonging to Maisto International, a popular maker of remote-controlled toy vehicles, has been caught pushing ransomware that holds visitors’ files hostage until they pay a hefty fee. Malicious files provided by…
Open wide and say, “Aaaargh.” ADA sends malware to dental offices?
Oh, wonderful. The American Dental Association (ADA) says it may have inadvertently mailed malware-laced USB thumb drives to thousands of dental offices nationwide. The problem first came to light in a post on the DSL Reports Security Forum. DSLR member “Mike” from Pittsburgh got curious about the integrity of a USB drive that the ADA mailed to members to share updated…
Hacker With Victims in 100 Nations Gets 7 Years in Prison
Patricia Hurtado reports: An Estonian man who admitted directing what the U.S. called a massive “cybercriminal enterprise” that infected more than 4 million computers in 100 countries was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, the U.S. said. Vladimir Tsastsin, who was brought to the U.S. in 2014 for trial after fighting extradition for…