Archive for September, 2017

What’s Happening with the Equifax Data Breach?

Friday, September 29th, 2017

The Equifax data breach has been a disaster, but you don’t seem to be hearing as much about it right now. So what’s the latest? One big piece of news you might have heard over the last week is that Richard Smith, Equifax’s CEO, has decided to retire, with the president of Equifax’s Asia-Pacific division taking […]

Cyberthreat Closes Schools

Wednesday, September 27th, 2017

We can go to the public with much of what we have. We can with great ease, put everything we have retrieved, from your district, on full display and cause you a tremendous amount of public embarrassment and humiliation. What does that mean, you ask? Imagine if we published all of your sensitive behavioural reports […]

Deloitte Hacked

Monday, September 25th, 2017

Deloitte, one of the largest accounting firms in the world, announced a data breach that they say didn’t have much of an impact, most seem to think they’re downplaying the incident. According to Deloitte, only six of their clients had their data stolen. They say they were able to research the hack and determine that […]

Are Law Firms the New Healthcare of Cybercrime?

Monday, September 25th, 2017

If you told someone a secret, and they went along telling people your secret would you tell them another secret? Of course not. If you told someone a secret and they accidentally told people your secret, would you tell them another? What if the secrets were insider information that could be why millions of dollars […]

Another 20 Million Hit with Another Locky Variant

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017

A staggering 20 million systems were hit with Locky, a popular strain of ransomware malware, in a single day. The attack is being pretty smart. It determines the language used on the computer and sends an email in that language. Vietnam has been hit the hardest, along with Colombia, Greece, India, and Turkey. Parts of […]

Backdoor on 200,000 Websites

Monday, September 18th, 2017

WordPress is a hugely popular website platform. One of the things that makes it popular is the number of free plugins that can easily add advanced features and functionality to sites. One of those plugins was designed to act as a backdoor to the estimated 200,000 websites using it. The plugin in question is called […]

CCleaner Update Includes Malware

Monday, September 18th, 2017

I hope you haven’t updated CCleaner in the last month or so. I know, I know, we’re always telling you to apply patches and updates as soon as you can, and that’s still solid advice. This is one exception. The problem is that an update for CCleaner that was available from August 15 through September […]

Are Parrots Compromising Your W-2?

Monday, September 18th, 2017

Most people like to think of hackers as vultures that pick money out of people’s pockets when they’re vulnerable. They’re vicious, ugly, and it’s easy to tell that they’re bad. That’s not how hackers work though, because they’re much smarter than that. Instead of simply stealing from people through brute force or picking off the […]

More Equifax Fallout: 200K Credit Cards Stolen

Thursday, September 14th, 2017

As if having the sensitive, personal information stolen from half of America wasn’t bad enough, and the way Equifax handled it, there’s more. Credit card companies have been telling banks and financial institutions that about 200,000 credit cards were also stolen in the process. Credit card companies often report information about fraudulent activity to the […]

No More Kaspersky for US Government

Thursday, September 14th, 2017

Do you like using Kaspersky Antivirus, or any of their other cybersecurity software? If you work for the US government, you can wave bye-bye to it on any of your work computers, thanks for a ban from the Department of Homeland Security. We reported a few weeks ago that American intelligence agencies were afraid there […]

Windows Update Fixes Spyware Vulnerability

Thursday, September 14th, 2017

Microsoft recently released a bunch of patches to shore up security on 81 vulnerabilities, nearly half of which would allow hackers to execute commands on your computer. The patch fixes a wide variety of issues. The biggest one is a zero day exploit that has been actively used already. It allows a hacker to install […]

You’ll Never Look at a Gas Pump the Same Way

Monday, September 11th, 2017

There’s a reason that the average American household owed over $16,000 in credit card debt last year. Most people rely on their debit and credit cards to make purchases because carrying large amounts of cash around isn’t only an easy way to lose it but is also impractical. There’s another reason why people don’t use […]

How Equifax Screwed Up Even More

Friday, September 8th, 2017

By now you are hopefully aware that one of the most disastrous data breaches ever has taken place. Equifax, a major credit bureau, announced recently that they had been they had suffered a data breach just over a month ago. The compromised information includes a lot of sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and […]

Healthcare Breaches not a Fad

Wednesday, September 6th, 2017

Since 2016, it has become increasingly obvious that cybercriminals have chosen healthcare providers as their prey of choice.   Since the beginning of 2017, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has reported nearly 200 serious (500+ patients impacted) healthcare breaches, a number that is well on its way to exceeding the 230 breaches reported last […]

Defray is Newest, Sophisticated Ransomware

Wednesday, September 6th, 2017

Defray, which (ironically enough) means providing money to financially leverage a cost or expense, is also the name of a new, highly-targeted ransomware virus, focusing on victimizing such vulnerable industries as healthcare and education across the US and UK. The sophistication of the highly-customized spear-phishing emails, and the higher-than-average ransom of approximately $5000 in bitcoin, […]

Nearly 20K Patients Exposed in Ransomware Attack

Wednesday, September 6th, 2017

Medical Oncology Hematology Consultants, based in Delaware, has begun the task of notifying its nearly 20,000 patients of a cyberattack that has potentially exposed such private information as their names, DOBs, phone numbers and health/treatment data. Though this cyberattack began on June 17, 2017, it was not discovered until July 7, 2017.  Upon learning of […]

6 Million Popular Instagram Accounts Breached

Wednesday, September 6th, 2017

The Instagram data breach is reportedly worse than initially suspected, with not just thousands, but MILLIONS of user accounts being compromised – to the tune of over six million high-profile accounts, including celebrities, athletes, and even politicians. The identity of the hacker (or hackers) is currently unknown, but what is known is that the stolen […]

Social Media’s Growing Threat to Healthcare

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

It seems like we can’t go a day without hearing about something on social media. Whether it’s a viral video or President Trump venting, we are more and more reliant on social media for news and entertainment every passing day. We connect with family and friends, we have discussions, we post pictures, and Facebook pages […]