Ali Condon reports: A man who first got into computer hacking when he was still in school has explained what it was like to work with infamous hacktivist group Anonymous. Mustafa Al-Bassam, who was once a member of Anonymous and is one of the founders of LulzSec, got his first taste for computer programming when he was just…
Category: Of Note
Russian hackers targeted U.S. nuclear scientists
James Pearson and Christopher Bing reports: A Russian hacking team known as Cold River targeted three nuclear research laboratories in the United States this past summer, according to internet records reviewed by Reuters and five cyber security experts. Between August and September, as President Vladimir Putin indicated Russia would be willing to use nuclear weapons to defend…
Romanian hospital victim of ransomware attack
Radu Dumitrescu reports: The Saint Gheorghe Recovery Hospital in Botoşani, in northeastern Romania, was the target of a ransomware attack in December, and medical activity is still impacted. Hackers demanded 3 Bitcoin for the decryption of the data on the servers. The attack is similar to the one in the summer of 2019, when four…
HC3: Analyst Note: Pro-Russian Hacktivist Group ‘KillNet’ Threat to HPH Sector
December 22, 2022 TLP:CLEAR Report: 202212221500 Executive Summary HC3 is closely tracking hacktivist groups which have previously affected a wide range of countries and industries, including the United States Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector. One of these hacktivist groups—dubbed ‘KillNet’—recently targeted a U.S. organization in the healthcare industry. The group is known to launch…
Why Do Ransomware Victims Pay for Data Deletion Guarantees?
Mathew J. Schwartz reports: Many ransomware-wielding attackers are expert at preying on their victims’ compulsion to clean up the mess. Hence victims often face a menu of options: Pay a ransom for a decryptor, and you’ll be able to unlock forcibly encrypted data. Pay more, and your name gets deleted from the list of victims…
New Data Quantifies Ransomware Attacks on Healthcare Providers
Hannah Neprash and Alan Z. Rozenshtein write: In a new JAMA Health Forum Original Investigation, we and our co-authors address this data gap. We have created the Tracking Healthcare Ransomware Events and Traits (THREAT) database, a comprehensive accounting of 374 ransomware attacks on U.S. healthcare delivery organizations from 2016-2021. To assemble this database we used…