DeeDee Sun reports: The Ballard Northwest Senior Center found itself in the bull’s-eye of ransomware attack, with its server wiped just weeks before their biggest fundraiser of the year. The senior center says it doesn’t know if it was targeted, or if the ransomware attack hit them at random, but now it’s struggling to get…
Privacy breach leads to embarassing award for Nova Scotia
As a follow-up to a Nova Scotia privacy breach previously noted on this site, The Chronicle Herald has an update with a government and police smackdown by EFF. Aaron Beswick explains: The Nova Scotia government received a cyber-security award this week. But it wasn’t a good one. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online non-profit group…
Chinese Government Officials Face Ransomware Attack
Samuel Haig reports: A statement issued by a Chinese provincial government website has announced that the National Network and Information Security Information Center has identified overseas hackers targeting the websites of government departments with emails containing ransomware. The ransomware was delivered via an email containing the subject line: “You must report to the police at…
Cyberattacker demands ransom from Northern Colorado utility
Pat Ferrier reports: When employees of the Fort Collins Loveland Water District and South Fort Collins Sanitation District got to work the morning of Feb. 11, they were locked out of technical and engineering data and drawings stored on their computers. The districts had fallen victim to a ransomware cyber attack, the second in two years, General Manager…
Hack attack at major B.C. booze distributor leaves customers struggling with backlog
Simon Little and John Hua report: Bars, restaurants and private liquor stores around B.C. are dealing with a frustrating backlog in supplies, after hackers targeted one of the biggest links in B.C.’s booze supply chain. Ransom-seeking cybercriminals successfully breached systems at Container World, a warehousing and logistics company that supplies much of province’s specialty liquor…
Are Bug Bounty Programs Worth It?
Julia R. Livingston and Craig A. Newman of Patterson Belknap write: Almost weekly, it seems there is another news article about a bug bounty program sponsored by a major corporation where an amateur hacker – often a teenager – is paid a sizeable sum of money for finding a bug in a company’s operating system…