Petronella Cybersecurity News

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 […]

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 […]