News Wrap: Ransomware Extortion Tactics, Contact-Tracing App Security Worries

Threatpost editors discuss the top news stories of the week ended May 15, including: Recent ransomware attacks, including ones targeting healthcare giant Magellan, the IT office that supports Texas appellate courts and judicial agencies, and a popular law firm that works with several A-list...

REvil Ransomware Attack Hits A-List Celeb Law Firm

A popular law firm that works with several A-list celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Drake and Madonna, has been hit by a ransomware attack. Hackers are now threatening to release the 756 gigabytes of data allegedly stolen – including non-disclosure agreements, client contracts and personal...

Hackers Leak Biopharmaceutical Firm's Data Stolen in Ransomware Attack

The Clop ransomware group attacked biopharmaceutical company ExecuPharm and reportedly leaked some of the company’s compromised data on underground forums. ExecuPharm, a Pennsylvania-based subsidiary of the U.S. biopharmaceutical giant Parexel, provides clinical trial management tools for...

Public Sector Ransomware Attacks Rage On: Can Your Organization Repel Them?

To pay or not to pay? That is the question many public-sector organizations must grapple with when faced with a complex ransomware attack – even while the COVID-19 pandemic rages on around them. Ransomware attacks to municipal, local, and state government agencies are on the rise. Places as...

LA County Hit with DoppelPaymer Ransomware Attack

The DoppelPaymer ransomware operators claim that they’ve hit a Los Angeles county with a ransomware attack – and are now leaking the city’s data online, according to a recent report. Impacted is the city of Torrance, a coastal U.S. city in the South Bay region of LA, which has a population of...

IC3 Releases Alert on Extortion Email Scams

The Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 has released an alert warning of a recent increase in extortion email scams. Cyber criminals threaten to release sexually explicit photos or videos of victims unless they agree to send payment. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA...

'Double Extortion' Ransomware Attacks Spike

Victims of ransomware attacks now face a double whammy of headaches. Cybercriminals are increasingly inflicting more pain on ransomware victims by threatening to leak compromised data or use it in future spam attacks, if ransom demands aren’t met. The ransomware tactic, call “double extortion,”...

Using Zoom? Here’s how to keep your business and employees safe

Cyber-criminals are always looking for new opportunities to make money and steal data. Globally trending events are a tried-and-tested way of doing just this, and they don’t come much bigger than the current Covid-19 pandemic. It’s sparking a wave of phishing, BEC, extortion, ransomware and data...

Coronavirus extortion scam threatens to infect victim’s family

By Sudais Asif The new Coronavirus extortion scam asks for $4000 in Bitcoin or scammers will infect the victim's family with the virus. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Coronavirus extortion scam threatens to infect victim's family...

Hacker Scheme Threatens AdSense Customers with Account Suspension

A new e-mail based extortion attack threatens users of Google’s AdSense banner-ad program with creating online behavior that will warrant them an account suspension—perhaps a permanent one–from Google if they don’t pay the attackers in bitcoin. The scam—revealed in a post by security writer and...

Pay Up, Or We’ll Make Google Ban Your Ads

A new email-based extortion scheme apparently is making the rounds, targeting Web site owners serving banner ads through Google's AdSense program. In this scam, the fraudsters demand bitcoin in exchange for a promise not to flood the publisher's ads with so much bot and junk traffic that Google's...

FBI Releases IC3 2019 Internet Crime Report

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 has released the 2019 Internet Crime Report, which includes statistics based on data reported by the public through the IC3 website. The top three crimes types reported by victims in 2019 were...

Happy New Fear! Gift-wrapped spam and phishing

Pre-holiday spam Easy money In the run-up to Christmas and New Year, scam е-mails mentioning easy pickings, lottery winnings, and other cash surprises are especially popular. All the more so given how simple it is to adapt existing schemes simply by mentioning the holiday in the subject line. For...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response trends in fall 2019

By David Liebenberg and Kendall McKay. While many Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR engagements have shown similar patterns over the past two quarters, we’re seeing a dangerous trend emerge this winter. Threat actors are increasingly combining the exfiltration of sensitive data along with data...

Ashley Madison Breach Extortion Scam Targets Hundreds

Nearly five years after the high-profile Ashley Madison data breach, hundreds of impacted website users are being targeted by a new extortion attack this past week. The 2015 data breach of the adultery website led to 32 million accounts being publicly dumped online, including victims’ names,...

The Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft

Organizations in the throes of cleaning up after a ransomware outbreak typically will change passwords for all user accounts that have access to any email systems, servers and desktop workstations within their network. But all too often, ransomware victims fail to grasp that the crooks behind the...

The Story of Tiversa

The New Yorker has published the long and interesting story of the cybersecurity firm Tiversa. Watching "60 Minutes," Boback saw a remarkable new business angle. Here was a multibillion-dollar industry with a near-existential problem and no clear solution. He did not know it then, but, as he turn...

Caller Poses as CISA Rep in Extortion Scam

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA is aware of a phone scam where a caller pretends to be a CISA representative. The scammer claims to have knowledge of the potential victim’s questionable behavior and attempts to extort money. If you receive a threatening call from someone...

Ransomware: 30 Years and Still Going Strong

In the tech world, systems – and methods to break said systems – seem to evolve by the minute. Technological advancement grows exponentially each year, and the realm of cybersecurity is no exception. However, some entities have survived and even thrived over the decades, rather than falling...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2019. Advanced threat predictions for 2020

Nothing is more difficult than making predictions. Rather than trying to gaze into a crystal ball, we will be making educated guesses based on what has happened during the last 12 months, to see where we can see trends that might be exploited in the near future. This is what we think might happen...