Eileen O’Grady reports that New Hampshire schools have pooled resources to hire someone who will negotiate with tech and app vendors to make sure that the contracts protect the schools and that contracts aren’t suddenly changed on them, etc. For the past three years, an alliance of school technology directors called the New Hampshire Student…
Category: Of Note
Cyber-enabled financial crime: USD 130 million intercepted in global INTERPOL police operation
Press Release: LYON, France – An INTERPOL police operation to tackle online fraud has seen almost 1000 suspects arrested and the seizure of USD 129,975,440 worth of virtual assets. Fraud investigators around the world worked together over five months (28 June – 23 November) to intercept money and virtual assets linked to a wide range…
The State of Cybersecurity for K-12 School Districts
From the Center for Internet Security: K-12 cybersecurity personnel, IT professionals, and leaders have faced significant challenges over the last several years. They’ve had to wade through operational and technological complexities as a result of shifting between in-person, virtual, and hybrid schooling. Simultaneously, they’ve found themselves one of the primary targets of cyber threat actors as…
New AxLocker ransomware encrypts files, then steals your Discord account
Bill Toulas reports: The new ‘AXLocker’ ransomware family is not only encrypting victims’ files and demanding a ransom payment but also stealing the Discord accounts of infected users. When a user logs into Discord with their credentials, the platform sends back a user authentication token saved on the computer. This token can then be used…
Researchers Quietly Cracked Zeppelin Ransomware Keys
Brian Krebs reports: Peter is an IT manager for a technology manufacturer that got hit with a Russian ransomware strain called “Zeppelin” in May 2020. He’d been on the job less than six months, and because of the way his predecessor architected things, the company’s data backups also were encrypted by Zeppelin. After two weeks…
Vanuatu island hit by ransom attack, cripples government
WION reports: The small archipelago of the South Pacific Ocean, Vanuatu, was attacked by ransomware on 4 November, Friday and stranded the country for over a week. According to civil servants in the government, they noticed that their official emails started bouncing back from government addresses, this was the first sign when they found that…