Is it any wonder that criminals keep flocking to ransomware when their individual haul from a well-executed digital heist can be worth $11 million? That's the amount paid to the REvil ransomware gang by meatpacker JBS USA, after its systems were crypto-locked on May 30.
If you're a Russian cybercrime gang feeling the heat after being sanctioned by the U.S. government, why not rebrand? So goes an apparent move by Evil Corp to disguise its WastedLocker ransomware as rival gang Babuk's PayloadBin, so any ransom payers won't think they're violating U.S. sanctions.
Former customers of the now-defunct encrypted communications service EncroChat, which was infiltrated by police last year, continue to get busted, including members of a crime syndicate that operated "an industrial-scale cocaine laboratory" in the Netherlands, Europol says.
Ransomware attacks are stuck on repeat: Criminal syndicates have found an extremely profitable business model, and they're milking it for all it's worth. So give the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, credit for having in place robust disaster recovery capabilities and vowing to remediate, rather than pay criminals.
"They’re playing games," is how one security expert describes Conti ransomware-wielding attackers' "gift" of a decryptor to Ireland's crypto-locked health service, while still demanding a ransom to not leak stolen health data. The same could be said of the DarkSide gang's promised retirement.
For anyone wondering how the Russian-speaking, ransomware-wielding DarkSide crime syndicate was able to disrupt a major U.S. fuel pipeline, a more pertinent question might be: Why didn’t it happen sooner?
"It's not personal ... It's strictly business." That line from "The Godfather" encapsulates the mindset of criminals who extort businesses using ransomware and other tools: Their imperative is profits, no matter any disruption they might cause to critical services, such as those provided by Colonial Pipeline.
Ransomware continues to prove a reliable moneymaker for criminals, with the average cyber extortion payoff rising to $220,298, reports ransomware incident response firm Coveware. Zero-day attacks and shakedowns targeting Accellion File Transfer Appliance users helped boost criminals' profits.
Dan Kaminsky, a renowned security researcher, died last week at age 42. He gained cybersecurity fame in 2008 after discovering and helping to coordinate a patch for a massive security flaw in the internet's Domain Name System.
Does the West want to have its digital existence defined by adversaries, or is it ready to devote the time, resources, expertise and planning required to more fully take control of its evolving destiny? That's the techno-Darwinian call to arms issued by Jeremy Fleming, the director of Britain's GCHQ intelligence...
A bombshell news report suggests that Dutch mobile network provider KPN in 2010 didn't know if one of its major equipment suppliers - China's Huawei - was spying on users. Viewed 11 years later, the report stands as a reminder to constantly review and address risks posed by suppliers.
Ireland's privacy regulator has launched an investigation into Facebook after personal information for 533 million of the social network's users appeared for sale online. It will analyze whether Facebook violated the country's data protection law or the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.
Interpol says Dutch and Nigerian suspects created a cloned version of a legitimate personal protective equipment provider's website to trick a German health authority seeking face masks. The case is a reminder that a "sophisticated" scheme need not require extreme technical sophistication to succeed.
Facebook has been attempting to dismiss the appearance of a massive trove of user data by claiming it wasn't hacked, but scraped. No matter how the theft is characterized, 533 million users have just learned that their nonpublic profile details were stolen and sold to fraudsters.
Loving your pet and creating tough-to-crack passwords should remain two distinctly separate activities. Unfortunately, Britain's National Cyber Security Center reports that more than 1 in 6 Brits admit to using the name of a pet as their password. And the problem is global.
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