U.K. Cyber Thug “PlugwalkJoe” Gets 5 Years in Prison

Joseph James "PlugwalkJoe" OConnor, a 24-year-old from the United Kingdom who earned his 15 minutes of fame by participating in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. That may seem like harsh punishment for a brief and very public cyber joy ride. But...

WannaCry and the Executive Order

Last week, The White House released its long awaited Executive Order EO, Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure, ironically enough during the same week we experienced the largest single ransomware attack that, by some estimates, has affected more than...

Rook Security on Online Extortion

Mat Gangwer, CTO, and Tom Gorup, Security Operations Lead, at Rook Security talk to Mike Mimoso about the aggressive rise in online extortion and how it threatens not only data but physical safety. Download: RookSecurityonOnlineExtortion.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves...

Open Databases a Juicy Extortion Target

Recent attacks against insecure MongoDB, Hadoop and CouchDB installations represent a new phase in online extortion, born from ransomware’s roots with the promise of becoming a nemesis for years to come. “These types of attacks have grown from ones of opportunity to full-scale automated and...