An interesting press release from Trend Micro suggests that more UK entities are paying ransom than we might hear about in the media. The survey was conducted in August: London, September 7th, 2016 – The majority (74%) of UK organisations who haven’t experienced a ransomware attack remain bullish about the threat, claiming they would never…
Category: Of Note
DHS Exposes Thousands of Individuals’ Private Information — Including Feds, Golfers and Priests
Eric Katz reports: Customs and Border Protection released the personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, of thousands of individuals to dozens of federal agencies during an investigation of cheating on polygraph tests. CBP violated some aspects of the Privacy Act in distributing the information across government, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found in…
U.S. personnel management hack preventable, congressional probe finds
Dustin Volz reports: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) did not follow rudimentary cyber security recommendations that could have mitigated or even prevented major attacks that compromised sensitive data belonging to more than 22 million people, a congressional investigation being released on Wednesday has found. Two breaches at the federal agency detected in 2014…
Hacker takes down CEO wire transfer scammers, sends their Win 10 creds to the cops
It’s nice to read reports where the good guys screw the bad guys… Darren Pauli reports: HITB Florian Lukavsky hacks criminals profiting from out-of-control multi-billion dollar CEO wire transfer scams… and they hate him for it. The director of SEC Consult’s Singapore office has made a name striking back at so-called “whaling” scammers by sending malicious Word documents…
Russian internet giant Rambler.ru hacked, leaking 98 million accounts
Zack Whittaker reports on yet another 2012 hack where the data are first being leaked publicly: Russian internet portal and email provider Rambler.ru has become the latest victim in a growing list of historical hacks. Breach notification site LeakedSource.com, which obtained a copy of an internal customer database, said the attack dates back to February…
Romanian Hacker “Guccifer” Sentenced to 52 Months in Prison for Computer Hacking Crimes
Marcel Lehel Lazar, 44, of Arad, Romania, a hacker who used the online moniker “Guccifer,” was sentenced today to 52 months in prison for unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft. Lazar pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia on May 25, 2016. According…