Cyber criminals adjusting their tactics to target data
Examination of law enforcement successes against ransomware agents in recent years reveals a resulting adjustment among cyber criminals. Despite some important figures of criminal gangs being apprehended, many who remain have learned from the experience and are switching their focus to demanding higher ransoms in place of a wider attack net. Rather than incur the… Read More
Hacker apprehended while the group remains at large
When you hear about something called The Dark Overlord, you might expect it to be something related to a movie or video game. Not so, here, with a Canadian hacker being sentenced to three years in prison for dealing in stolen personal information, including doing business with a hacking and extortion group with that moniker…. Read More
Crypto.com and rising data breach numbers
Surprising possibly no one, the latest annual report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) shows that the number of data breaches rose 68% in 2021 compared to the year before. Every industry except the military experienced an increase in the number of breaches. Similarly, ransomware has doubled in use in each of the past… Read More
Hard drive file leads to data breach
The time before a data breach is the most important period in an organization’s data security practice. The variety of ways in which employees can accidentally compromise everything speaks to the value of ensuring the data on a network is worthless to intruders, even after a breach. Incidents like the breach of the Rhode Island… Read More
Log4J bug hits everything, everywhere
Engineers at Google and scores of other tech companies have endured a less than pleasant couple of weeks, ever since the discovery of the log4j bug. It has been described as the most serious data breach ever, due to the sheer volume of online services that use the log4j code, which helps applications track their… Read More
Zero Trust as part of data security policy
Examining over 530 data breaches across 17 countries, a 2021 report from the Ponemon Institute reveals that the average cost per breach this year increased by 10%, the largest such spike in years. According to the report, the most substantial hit to a breached firm comes from lost business, followed by spending on breach notifications,… Read More
Robinhood’s breach brings lawsuit
Robinhood Markets Inc. is now facing a lawsuit for its recent data breach, one that saw about 7 million individuals have their personal data stolen, or one-third of Robinhood’s total userbase. Hackers in this case utilized social engineering, fooling a customer service representative over the phone, which allowed them entry. Once again, it’s interesting how… Read More
12 hackers arrested in Europe
According to security groups Kaspersky and Emsisoft, 2020 saw approximately 65,000 successful ransomware attacks worldwide. As part of a joint operation, Europol has recently arrested 12 of the contributors to this total. After much coordination by the agency and involvement with other authorities in Europe and the US, the suspects were apprehended in the Ukraine… Read More
Amazon’s GDPR Penalties
A massive fine against Amazon for GDPR violations was instituted this month, and now the corporate giant is appealing the results. Insisting the $865 million penalty is completely baseless and unwarranted, Amazon has taken its issue up with the Luxembourg Administrative Tribunal after the country’s data protection regulator levied the fine in July. Indeed, Amazon… Read More
Nuclear sub data smuggled in sandwich (but not a sub)
Selling nuclear warship data and FBI arrests go together like PB & J. In this case, literally, since the guilty party hid the SD storage card containing the data inside an actual sandwich. I didn’t have that on my data security bingo. A US Navy engineer and his wife are now accused of planning to… Read More