Adam Stone reports: When state and local IT systems get breached, there’s a balancing act to be struck. How much can and should the public be told? Some advocates of transparency and accountability say anything that happens in the public realm ought to be public knowledge. On the opposite extreme, some IT leaders worry that…
Category: Of Note
Thumb drive with confidential Yukon gov’t case files found in Whitehorse pawn shop
CBC reports: The Yukon government, RCMP and the territory’s privacy commissioner are investigating how a thumb drive containing confidential case files belonging to the Health and Social Services department ended up at a Whitehorse pawn shop. City resident Brian Zink discovered the data after he bought the thumb drive at a pawn shop. Read more at CBC. h/t, @fanCRTCProfling
Police tricks DeadBolt ransomware out of 155 decryption keys
Sergiu Gatlan reports: The Dutch National Police, in collaboration with cybersecurity firm Responders.NU, tricked the DeadBolt ransomware gang into handing over 155 decryption keys by faking ransom payments. DeadBolt is a ransomware operation active since January and known for demanding 0.03 bitcoin ransoms after encrypting thousands of QNAP and Asustor Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices (20,000…
Australian police secret agents exposed in Colombian data leak by Guacamaya
For the past few weeks, @Chum1ng0 has been reporting on the Guacamaya hacktivists’ activities. They have already caused some consternation and problems in Mexico and Chile. Now there is an even more concerning aspect to the leaks. Bill Toulas reports: Identities of secret agents working for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have been exposed after…
NHS vendor Advanced won’t say if patient data was stolen during ransomware attack
Carly Page reports: Advanced, an IT service provider for the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS), has confirmed that attackers stole data from its systems during an August ransomware attack, but refuses to say if patient data was compromised. Advanced first confirmed the ransomware incident on August 4 following widespread disruption to NHS services across the U.K. The attack…
Quarter of Healthcare Ransomware Victims Forced to Halt Operations – Report
Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, today revealed that 86% of global healthcare organizations (HCOs) that have been compromised by ransomware suffered operational outages. Most (57%) global HCOs admit being compromised by ransomware over the past three years, according to the study. Of these, 25% say they were forced to completely halt operations, while…