FBI Safe Online Surfing Challenge

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI has launched the Safe Online Surfing SOS Challenge, encouraging educators to promote web literacy and safety for students during the 2019-20 school year. FBI developed the program to educate children on how to navigate the web securely using activities that...

Ransomware Protection Strategies

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has observed an increase in ransomware attacks across the Nation. Helping organizations protect themselves from ransomware is a chief priority for CISA. Organizations are encouraged to review the following resources to help prevent,...

Potential Hurricane Dorian Cyber Scams

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA warns users to remain vigilant for malicious cyber activity targeting Hurricane Dorian disaster victims and potential donors. Fraudulent emails commonly appear after major natural disasters and often contain links or attachments that direc...

Ransomware Hits Dental Data Backup Service Offering Ransomware Protection

THIS WEEK IN THE IRONIC NEWS: DDS Safe, an online cloud-based data backup system that hundreds of dental practice offices across the United States are using to safeguard medical records and other information of their patients from ransomware attacks has been hit with ransomware. Provided by two...

Ransomware Bites Dental Data Backup Firm

PerCSoft, a Wisconsin-based company that manages a remote data backup service relied upon by hundreds of dental offices across the country, is struggling to restore access to client systems after falling victim to a ransomware attack. West Allis, Wis.-based PerCSoft is a cloud management provider...

Capital One Hacker Also Accused of Hacking 30 More Companies and CryptoJacking

Former Amazon employee Paige Thompson, who was arrested last month in relation to the Capital One data breach, has been accused of hacking not only the U.S. credit card issuer, but also more than 30 other companies. An indictment unsealed on Wednesday revealed that Thompson not just stole data fr...

French Police Remotely Removed RETADUP Malware from 850,000 Infected PCs

The French law enforcement agency, National Gendarmerie, today announced the successful takedown of one of the largest wide-spread RETADUP botnet malware and how it remotely disinfected more than 850,000 computers worldwide with the help of researchers. Earlier this year, security researchers at...

Protect Against Romance Scams

The Federal Trade Commission FTC has released a short video to help users spot and defend against romance scams. In this type of fraud, cyber criminals gain the confidence of their victims and trick them into sending money. The video includes stories that romance scammers tell to online daters to...

Backdoors are a security vulnerability

Last month, US Attorney General William Barr resurrected a government appeal to technology companies: Provide law enforcement with an infallible, “secure” method to access, unscramble, and read encrypted data stored on devices and sent across secure messaging services. Barr asked, in more accurat...

Capital One Data Breach Affects 106 Million Customers; Hacker Arrested

Another week, another massive data breach. Capital One, the fifth-largest U.S. credit-card issuer and banking institution, has recently suffered a data breach exposing the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants in the United States and 6 million in Canada. The data...

A Hacker Stole Data From 100 Million Capital One Customers

In a criminal complaint, the FBI detailed how a hacker allegedly stole data from 100 million people—and how she got caught...

No Jail Time for “WannaCry Hero”

Marcus Hutchins, the "accidental hero" who helped arrest the spread of the global WannaCry ransomware outbreak in 2017, will receive no jail time for his admitted role in authoring and selling malware that helped cyberthieves steal online bank account credentials from victims, a federal judge rul...

Judge Rules No Jail Time for WannaCry 'Killer' Marcus Hutchins, a.k.a. MalwareTech

Marcus Hutchins, better known as MalwareTech, has been sentenced to "time served" and one year of supervised release for developing and selling the Kronos banking malware. Yes, Hutchins will not go to prison, United States District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller ruled today in Milwaukee County Court,...

Silk Road Admin Sentenced to 78 Months in Prison On Drug Trafficking Charges

An Irish national has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for his role as one of the administrators and forum moderators who helped run now-defunct dark web marketplace "Silk Road." Gary Davis, 31, of Wicklow, Ireland, was known as 'Libertas' on the Silk Road website, then-largest underground...

Neo-Nazi SWATters Target Dozens of Journalists

Nearly three dozen journalists at a broad range of major publications have been targeted by a far-right group that maintains a Deep Web database listing the personal information of people who threaten their views. This group specializes in encouraging others to harass those targeted by their ire,...

FaceApp scares point to larger data collection problems

Last week, if you thumbed your way through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you likely saw altered photos of your friends with a few extra decades written onto their faces—wrinkles added, skin sagged, hair bereft of color. Has 2019 really been that long? Not really. The photos are the work of...

Citrix Confirms Password-Spraying Heist of Reams of Internal IP

UPDATE Digital workspace and enterprise networks vendor Citrix has concluded its investigation into a 6TB data heist in March, which it said was the work of international cybercriminals who exploited weak passwords on an internal network. The attackers intermittently accessed Citrix’ infrastrucur...

Palantir's Surveillance Service for Law Enforcement

Motherboard got its hands on Palantir's Gotham user's manual, which is used by the police to get information on people: The Palantir user guide shows that police can start with almost no information about a person of interest and instantly know extremely intimate details about their lives. The...

Helping survivors of domestic abuse: What to do when you find stalkerware

We’re going to talk about something different today. We’re going to talk about domestic abuse. Earlier this year, cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab announced that the latest upgrade to its Android app would inform users about whether their devices were running stealthy, behind-the-scenes...

Ransomware: A Persistent Scourge Requiring Corporate Action Now

A ransomware attack on Belgian airplane manufacturer ASCO this week is the latest in a string of incidents that show the unique danger lurking in this type of malware campaign. The rise of ransomware has cost companies millions to remediate – both in making payments and in system restoration and...