New York City just opened its Cyber Critical Services and Infrastructure (CCSI) Project, a real-time operational center to protect the metropolitan area against cyberattacks. Located in lower Manhattan, the center shares intelligence with 282 partners, including the New York Police Department (NYPD), Amazon, International Business Machines (IBM), the Federal Reserve Bank and several New York healthcare systems. The anti-cybercriminal effort started two years ago but has been entirely virtual until now. Continue reading New York Is First City to Open a Cyberattack Defense Center

Software company Kaseya was targeted by a cyberattack starting Friday that has since spread to hundreds of mainly small and medium-size businesses. On Monday, Kaseya chief executive Fred Voccola reported to Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, that the attackers demanded a $70 million ransomware payment and that his company wasn’t aware of any breach of critical infrastructure impacting national security. According to experts, the attackers may be members of REvil, a Russian cybercriminal group. Continue reading Massive Ransomware Attack Affects Hundreds of Businesses

The FBI is investigating 100 ransomware variants, stated director Christopher Wray, who revealed that many of them trace back to Russian hackers. He noted that the cyberattacks share “a lot of parallels … a lot of importance, and a lot of focus by us on disruption and prevention” with the September 11 terrorist attacks. Most recently, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline cost its operators $4.4 million to regain control and restore services (however, federal authorities recovered $2.3 million in cryptocurrency yesterday). Another attack targeted JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company.  Continue reading FBI Director Raises Alarm Over Ransomware Threats to U.S.

MIT Technology Review Insights and cybersecurity firm Darktrace published a survey of 300+ worldwide C-level executives, directors and managers that reveals 96 percent are adopting “defensive AI” against AI-driven attacks. Of this cohort, 55 percent said traditional security solutions aren’t able to anticipate such AI-driven attacks. Defensive AI is comprised of self-learning algorithms that recognize normal user, device and system patterns and can spot anomalies. Gartner reported that global spending on IT will reach $4.1 trillion this year. Continue reading C-Suite Trends: Spending on Defensive AI, IT to Rise in 2021

President Joe Biden is working on a draft executive order to require companies doing business with the federal government to report hacks within a few days. Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated the order would also require the companies to use data encryption and two-factor authentication and would combat ransomware and improve protection for industrial control systems, transportation and election security. The SolarWinds hack has prompted the government to pay closer attention to cybersecurity. Continue reading Biden to Issue Executive Order Upgrading U.S. Cybersecurity

Russia and China recently ran sophisticated hacks from servers inside the United States, going undetected by the National Security Agency, which is prohibited from conducting surveillance in the U.S., as well as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. Private computer security firms were the first to raise the alarm on these foreign attacks, and Microsoft reported that its patches are being reverse-engineered by criminal groups to launch ransomware attacks on corporations. The White House is paying attention. Continue reading Cybersecurity: White House Pursues Public-Private Alliances

Digital Citizens Alliance and NAGRA released a joint report revealing that illegal piracy subscription services — Internet Protocol Television (PS IPTV) — are now a $1+ billion industry. “Money for Nothing” describes an ecosystem of retailers and wholesalers enabled by legal businesses and consumed by at least nine million U.S. households. The report also looks into its infrastructure, supply chain, and ad-supported business models. Piracy injures consumers via malware among other risks. Continue reading Pirate IPTV Subscription Services Now a $1+ Billion Industry

K7 Labs malware researcher Dinesh Devadoss discovered a new form of malware aimed at Mac computers. ThiefQuest (originally dubbed EvilQuest, until researchers discovered that’s the name of a Steam game) isn’t simply ransomware but also contains spyware that allows it to exfiltrate an infected computer’s files, search it for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and nab passwords and credit card numbers. Even after a computer reboots, the spyware lingers as a backdoor that could be used for a second-stage attack. Continue reading ThiefQuest Is New Ransomware and Spyware Aimed at Macs

An increasing number of cities, hospitals and businesses are being attacked by ransomware, by which bad actors shut down the victim’s computer network until a ransom is paid. Up until now, these attacks have been hard to measure since many of those impacted quietly paid the ransom without notifying any authorities. Security firm Emsisoft just reported a 41 percent increase in ransomware attacks between 2018 and 2019, with 205,280 businesses and other groups submitting evidence of such intrusions in 2019. Continue reading Ransomware Attacks Increase and Demand Bigger Payouts

Early Tuesday morning, just as CES 2020 was getting underway, the team that monitors computers for Las Vegas detected a potential cyberattack as the city’s systems were reportedly compromised. While city officials tweeted about the breach, the information was light on details regarding which operations had been affected or the extent of the attack. The timing was unfortunate, since the annual CES confab is one of the largest events in Las Vegas. Last year, the show attracted more than 175,000 people and 4,400 exhibitors, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. Continue reading Las Vegas Was a Target of Cyberattack While Hosting CES

Cybersecurity firm Cyren recently discovered Syrk, a free tool that allows players to cheat at video game “Fortnite.” It also learned that Syrk can disable anti-malware software and encrypt batches of user files for ransom. Akamai has reported a significant rise in so-called credential-stuffing attacks, by which criminals use stolen identities in automated attacks to break into accounts. Akamai found 55 billion credential stuffing attacks from November 2017 to the end of March 2019. Gaming sites had 12 billion of these attacks. Continue reading Games Are Targets for Ransomware and Credential Stuffing

Adware is the flavor of malware that the ordinary person is most likely to encounter on a smartphone or browser. Aimed at generating profits, adware sneaks ads into apps and browsers, with advertisers paying developers based on the number of people who load them. The smartphone is the ideal environment for this version of malware, via apps sold in Apple’s App Store or Google Play Store. Ad malware largely goes unnoticed because its main impact (besides relentlessly serving ads) is to slow down the device. Continue reading Why Adware Is the Most Intrusive Malware on Our Devices

The nonprofit Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) has organized its members, which includes some big tech companies such as Cisco, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec, to share knowledge about software bugs and hacking threats, to alert their customers and limit the damage. To do so, the companies have decided to put cybersecurity ahead of the competition. Dubbed “early sharing,” the strategy goes into action as government-linked groups in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia run devastating hacking campaigns. Continue reading Cyber Threat Alliance’s Early Sharing Aims to Stop Hackers

Facebook, Intel and Microsoft announced bugs in their software this week. Facebook patched WhatsApp to prevent hackers from using it to install spyware on mobile phones. Intel described its efforts to fix a problem with its chipsets that allow attackers to access private data. Now Microsoft warned that it just patched a bug similar to the WannaCry ransomware crypto-worm that attacked computers around the globe in 2017. The company said that, to its knowledge, no one yet had exploited the Windows vulnerability. Continue reading Microsoft Warns Windows Bug May Be Abused by Hackers

Cyber criminals recently hacked the municipal computers of Rockport, Maine, demanding $1,200 in Bitcoin to unlock them. That’s just one example of a surge of ransomware aimed at municipal computer systems, both large and small, including the city of Atlanta and a St. Louis library system. According to Ponemon Institute, an information systems research firm, these kinds of public sector hacks are increasing faster than those on private ones. City officials are often unprepared to deal with the consequences. Continue reading Municipalities Increasingly Targeted for Ransomware Attacks