Petronella Cybersecurity News

Paige Thompson, a software engineer who formerly worked for Amazon Web Services, is accused of breaking into a Capital One server.  Thompson obtained access to 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers.  She also had access to over 100 million people’s names, addresses, credit scores and limits, […]

The HIPAA Privacy Rule states that clearinghouses, covered entities, and business associates are required to follow the HIPAA security and privacy rules. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the Privacy Rule “requires that a covered entity obtain satisfactory assurances from its business associate that the business associate will appropriately safeguard the […]

With the ever-growing monitoring of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations and media attention to their subsequent soaring costs, there has never been a better time to ensure your Access Control/Governance Policy is in place.  According to hitconsultant.net, in regard to ongoing HIPAA compliance efforts, initiating an access governance program perhaps is the best […]

Equifax has agreed to pay anywhere from $575 million to $700 million in its settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and 50 U.S. states and territories.  In 2017, Equifax had one of the largest data breaches in US history when they failed to properly secure over 148 million […]

Microsoft Security Intelligence has sent out a new set of Tweets outlining an attack strategy that uses a number of Windows toolsets to install a remote access trojan (RAT) malware onto victims’ systems. The malware uses executables, tools, and scripts to avoid detection. According to KnowBe4, here’s how it works: The potential victim receives an […]

Ransomware is targeting systems world-wide, big and small.  And every unlucky victim faces the same dilemma:  to pay or not to pay.  Despite the US Conference of Mayors approved resolution last week to not pay cybercriminals, there are still persistent arguments to both sides of the issue. According to the FBI’s “Ransomware Prevention and Response […]

Scammers are using Google’s Calendar app to trick users into clicking on phishing links that upload malware hidden in a java script. Over 1.5 billion users are at risk. Scammers send a calendar invite complete with meeting topic and location to fool users into clicking the innocent and valid looking link poised to send them […]

Without a federal privacy law in place, individual states are starting to examine privacy legislation on their own. California already has the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).  It appears the next state will be New York. NY Senate Bill 224 is privacy legislation that’s even tougher than California’s bill. Though the NY Privacy Act (NYPA) […]

A new set of malware is locking down computers instantly and demanding hundreds of bitcoin to get access to your files and network back. Recent attacks don’t appear to be derived from a particular nation but rather a group of hackers called ShadowGate. According to Malwarebytes, an antivirus developer, the attack targets exploits found in […]

A ransomware attack in Florida on June 10th has resulted in another payout for cybercriminals.  Officials in Lake City voted to pay 42 bitcoins to decrypt files and get back on their network.  The 42 bit coins come to about $530,000.  Lake City’s insurance company will be paying most of that, but the city still […]

Mozilla released Firefox 67.0.3 and Firefox ESR 60.7.1 patches and you need to update ASAP. The patches repair a critical zero-day vulnerability that hackers have been repeatedly exploiting recently. Firefox for Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire TV are not affected, but any desktop Firefox is at risk. Samuel Groß, cybersecurity researcher at Google Project Zero, […]

The U.S. hack of Russia’s power grid could start a cyberwar.  The Kremlin issued a formal warning of potential retaliation with attacks on businesses, agencies, and infrastructure in the United States. Russia has been a continuing source of many cybercriminal groups, causing the U.S. to shift from cyber defense to cyber offense. The tactic could […]

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 […]