AJ Dellinger reports: The demand for ransomware attacks on dark web skyrocketed in the last year, with the marketplace showing a growth of more than 2,500 percent, according to a new report. United States-based cybersecurity company Carbon Black published a study titled “the Ransomware Economy” earlier this week that shows ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly…
Category: Of Note
U.S. Education Dept. responds to TheDarkOverlord attacks with new cyber advisory
It’s gratifying when advocacy efforts have an impact. Last week, this blogger spent a good amount of time talking with Kathleen Styles, Chief Privacy Officer of the U.S. Education Department. We discussed the TheDarkOverlord attacks on the education sector and I had urged the Department to try to warn schools how to better protect themselves. I…
Cybercriminals hijacked a government server to send sophisticated malware to U.S. companies
Chris Bing reports: A Eastern European hacking group hijacked U.S. state government servers to dispense malware through phishing emails that were designed to appear like they had come from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to research by Cisco’s Talos team and an analysis by other cybersecurity experts familiar with the activity. The technical findings connect…
U.S. Supreme Court declines to review computer hacking cases
Andrew Chung reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sidestepped a growing controversy over who can give permission to access a computer, a debate that goes to the core of what constitutes hacking in this era of widespread use of the internet and social media. The justices turned away two cases over whether it is…
Accenture left a huge trove of highly sensitive data on exposed servers
Zack Whittaker reports: Technology and cloud giant Accenture has confirmed it inadvertently left a massive store of private data across four unsecured cloud servers, exposing highly sensitive passwords and secret decryption keys that could have inflicted considerable damage on the company and its customers. The servers, hosted on Amazon’s S3 storage service, contained hundreds of…
Deloitte hack hit server containing emails from across US government
Nick Hopkins reports: The hack into the accountancy giant Deloitte compromised a server that contained the emails of an estimated 350 clients, including four US government departments, the United Nations and some of the world’s biggest multinationals, the Guardian has been told. Sources with knowledge of the hack say the incident was potentially more widespread…