Alexander Martin reports: Australia became on Friday the first country in the world to require victims of ransomware attacks to declare to the government any extortion payments made on their behalf to cybercriminals. The law, initially proposed last year, only applies to organizations with an annual turnover greater than AUS $3 million ($1.93 million) alongside a smaller…
Category: Of Note
Possible ransomware attack disrupts Maine and New Hampshire Covenant Health locations (1)
Updated June 25, 2025: Qilin gang has claimed responsibility for the attack and has posted proof of claims on its leak site. The proof of claims appears to be from personnel/internal files. News Center Maine reports: A cyber incident affecting several hospitals in Maine is now under investigation. Covenant Health shared with NEWS CENTER Maine that…
HHS OCR Settles HIPAA Security Rule Investigation of BayCare Health System for $800k and Corrective Action Plan
HHS OCR has settled another enforcement action involving the HIPAA Security Rule. From their press release yesterday, it sounds like an insider wrongdoing case. In its formal resolution agreement, the government states that on October 23, 2018, OCR received a complaint alleging that on October 8, 2018, an unknown third party accessed her printed and…
Operation ENDGAME strikes again: the ransomware kill chain broken at its source
From Europol: Cybercriminals around the world have suffered a major disruption after law enforcement and judicial authorities, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, dismantled key infrastructure behind the malware used to launch ransomware attacks. From 19 to 22 May, authorities took down some 300 servers worldwide, neutralised 650 domains, and issued international arrest warrants against 20…
Mysterious Database of 184 Million Records Exposes Vast Array of Login Credentials
Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman report: The possibility that data could be inadvertently exposed in a misconfigured or otherwise unsecured database is a longtime privacy nightmare that has been difficult to fully address. But the new discovery of a massive trove of 184 million records—including Apple, Facebook, and Google logins and credentials for accounts connected to multiple governments—underscores the risks…
Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government, sources say
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports: More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others….