The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a baby’s death at an Alabama hospital in 2019, which they argue was a direct result of the ransomware attack the hospital was undergoing. Amid the hack, fewer eyes were on the heart monitors — normally tracked on a large screen at the nurses’ station, in addition to … Read More “A Death Due to Ransomware” »
Category: cybercrime
Auto Added by WPeMatico
It’s a big one: As first reported by Motherboard on Sunday, someone on the dark web claims to have obtained the data of 100 million from T-Mobile’s servers and is selling a portion of it on an underground forum for 6 bitcoin, about $280,000. The trove includes not only names, phone numbers, and physical addresses … Read More “T-Mobile Data Breach” »
Ransomware isn’t new; the idea dates back to 1986 with the “Brain” computer virus. Now, it’s become the criminal business model of the internet for two reasons. The first is the realization that no one values data more than its original owner, and it makes more sense to ransom it back to them — sometimes … Read More “Disrupting Ransomware by Disrupting Bitcoin” »
This is an interesting development: Just days after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shut down ransomware groups attacking American targets, the most aggressive of the groups suddenly went off-line early Tuesday. […] Gone was the publicly available “happy blog” the group maintained, listing some of its victims and the group’s … Read More “REvil is Off-Line” »
As ransomware becomes more common, I’m seeing more discussions about the ethics of paying the ransom. Here’s one more contribution to that issue: a research paper that the insurance industry is hurting more than it’s helping. However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is ransomware. Although it is a societal problem, cyber insurers … Read More “Insurance and Ransomware” »
The New York Times has a long story on the DarkSide ransomware gang. A glimpse into DarkSide’s secret communications in the months leading up to the Colonial Pipeline attack reveals a criminal operation on the rise, pulling in millions of dollars in ransom payments each month. DarkSide offers what is known as “ransomware as a … Read More “The DarkSide Ransomware Gang” »
This is a major story: a probably Russian cybercrime group called DarkSide shut down the Colonial Pipeline in a ransomware attack. The pipeline supplies much of the East Coast. This is the new and improved ransomware attack: the hackers stole nearly 100 gig of data, and are threatening to publish it. The White House has … Read More “Ransomware Shuts Down US Pipeline” »
Excellent New Yorker article on North Korea’s offensive cyber capabilities. Powered by WPeMatico
Vice is reporting on a cell phone vulnerability caused by commercial SMS services. One of the things these services permit is text message forwarding. It turns out that with a little bit of anonymous money — in this case, $16 off an anonymous prepaid credit card — and a few lies, you can forward the … Read More “Easy SMS Hijacking” »
The Cambridge Cybercrime Centre has a series of papers on cybercrime during the coronavirus pandemic. Powered by WPeMatico