Petronella Cybersecurity News

Canadian citizens suspected of spreading malicious software could be facing fines in the millions of dollars for their criminal activities. The passage of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) covers much more than just mail.  It also covers altered transmissions of data, botnets, and the installation of known malware and spyware software. Under the CASL, businesses found […]

Twitter did it. Facebook did it. Now Google’s done it. Google revealed Tuesday in a blog post that it accidentally stored its users’ passwords unprotected in plain text.  For fourteen years, any Google employee with access to the Google internal servers could read them. G Suite, previously known as Google Apps and mainly a business […]

Ransomware attacks are on the rise, and while most attacks are aimed at large entities who can provide large payoffs, individuals are still at personal risk. Until money is paid, you could be looking at a total lockout of all of your files, email, and financial systems. Here are just a few ways to minimize […]

So far in 2019, there have been 22 reported public-sector ransomware attacks on US cities, signaling a rise in frequency since 2018. The attacks are targeted at local US government facilities such as cities, police stations, and schools. Some of these attacks have cost millions of dollars in ransom to get functioning again. Recorded Future, […]

The city of Baltimore was recently hit with a crippling ransomware attack, bringing most of the city’s servers down and affecting everything from bill payments to government communications. Baltimore has refused to pay, so the hackers seem to have upped the ante. A newly-created Twitter account claims to show screenshots of sensitive information purloined from […]

“Zombieload” vulnerabilities of the microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) variety have been discovered by researchers Michael Schwarz, Moritz Lipp, and Daniel Gruss at Graz University of Technology in Austria, as well as Jo Van Bulk at Belgium’s KU Leuven. These latest flaws in Intel processors can be utilized by attackers to steal private data from PCs […]

The mystery surrounding the misappropriation of some of the National Security Agency’s most effective cyberweapons deepened recently when a Chinese hacking group known as Buckeye, APT3, and Gothic Panda utilized NSA exploits and attack tools EternalRomance and EternalSynergy. It remains unclear how they obtained the NSA tools though both were released by the Shadow Brokers. […]

Companies use enterprise VPNs, or virtual private networks, to allow employees to work remotely. An alert from the Department of Homeland Security just announced, however, that a vulnerability has been discovered in some major enterprise VPN providers. The vulnerability stems from authentication tokens that store a user’s login credentials on their computer so they don’t […]

By now everyone should know that ransomware is a huge threat. PayPal aims to do something about that. What we can figure out from the patent filed by the online transaction company is that PayPal seems to have found a way to detect ransomware before all your files are locked away, and in that time […]

Reports from Techcrunch a few days ago stated that an email breach occurred between January 1st and March 28th at Microsoft. The breach exposed email addresses and subject lines of an unknown number of accounts, but no actual email content. Microsoft states that a customer support representative’s account credentials were compromised which allowed access to […]

vxCrypter Ransomware not only encrypts your computer, it also deletes duplicate files.  According to Lawrence Abrams, creator and owner of BleepingComputer, the vxCrypter Ransomware could be “the first ransomware infection that not only encrypts a victim’s data, but also tidy’s up their computer by deleting duplicate files.” vxCrypter is based on an older ransomware called […]

Third party Facebook app developers have caused yet another database leak.  Unprotected Amazon cloud servers put more than half a billion Facebook user information at risk. UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, discovered that two datasets were publicly accessible—Coltura Colectiva, a Mexican media company, and “At the pool”, a Facebook-integrated ap. Researchers at the cybersecurity firm UpGuard […]

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – As hackers’ attacks impact local governments and other entities across the country, Wake County leaders took a closer look Monday at efforts to detect threats and mitigate their effects. Bill Greeves, the county’s chief information and innovation officer, told county commissioners about training employees receive in identifying risks and how his […]

Insurance companies are among the growing chorus of those who say it’s not a matter of if your law firm will get hacked, it’s a matter of when. And that has given rise to more carriers offering cybersecurity insurance. “If I could convince people of one thing, it’s that security by anonymity is false. It’s […]

Like most things in life, practice makes perfect.  Well, perhaps, better at least.  KnowBe4 has reported that a “long-term phishing study involving 6 healthcare institutions shows employees are vulnerable to phishing attacks and that they can become more vigilant through exposure.” Researchers initiated 95 separate campaigns studying employee interaction with over 2 million simulated phishing […]

California-based Meditab, a leading software maker for healthcare electronic medical records, was leaking thousands of doctor’s notes, medical records, and prescriptions. The cause? A security lapse that left a fax server without a password. Without a password, the over six million records in its database could be read in real time. And to add insult […]

North Carolina proudly claims the slogan “First in flight” thanks to the first manned flight carried out by the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Now North Carolina can claim another first in flight. UPS’s first drone delivery was carried out in the state capital, Raleigh. The use of drones is expected to not […]

Hard on the heels of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lengthy Facebook post that the social network was doubling down on privacy and ensuring users’ data remains safe, Facebook faces yet more negative publicity. KrebsOnSecurity recently announced that an internal investigation has found between 200-600 million Facebook user passwords stored in insecure plaintext format. Meaning any of […]

Citrix Systems announced an apparent network penetration by hackers. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida technology business was appraised by a suspected problem last Wednesday by the FBI. They have launched a full investigation. Stan Black, Citrix’s CSIO, said in his blog post on Friday that while the hackers appear to have accessed and stolen business documents, […]

Ransomware is here with a vengeance. Cybercriminals are seeing far too much reward for their efforts to stop now. Coverware recently released their 2018 Q4 Ransomware Marketplace report with numbers that confirm the trend. Victim company sizes have increased so their payouts have increased. Coverware has also seen a 39% increase in attacks on backups, […]