Petronella Cybersecurity News

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, […]

Jackson County, Georgia finds its coffers down by $400,000 this week thanks to cybercriminal ransom. A ransomware infection blocked access to the county IT systems for most of the local government with the exception of its website and 911 services. Though the county has hired a cyber-security consultant, they have yet to confirm how the […]

Charlie Osborne at ZDNet has revealed a data breach of epic proportions. Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered over 809 million records in MongoDB. The information offered included varying degrees of private information including email addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, physical addresses and dates of birth. “Although not all records contained the detailed profile information […]

Chief Information Security Officers play an essential part in the success of your business security, yet recent studies have found that only 13% of organizations are truly prepared for attacks on their network, mobile, and physical security. Without a CISO, the majority of security readiness falls on the CEO who usually has an overflowing to-do […]

Over 974,000 people are being notified by The University of Washington Medicine. For a three-week period in December, their information was exposed on the internet. A misconfigured server on the UW Medicine database was the cause of the breach. A patient discovered the leaked information while doing a Google search on themselves and contacted the […]

I sat down with Alex Pearce of Ellis & Winters LLP, the current chair of North Carolina Bar Association’s Privacy & Data Security Committee to discuss the current trends he sees in security for lawyers.  PETRONELLA: What is the biggest threat to firms that already have cybersecurity systems in place? PEARCE: One of the biggest threats is […]

Updating your WordPress content management software to version 5.0.3 is URGENT! RIPS Technologies told Hacker News of a remote code execution vulnerability that affects all previous versions. That’s over six years of vulnerability. The remote code execution attack can be utilized by any nefarious user with at least an author account via a combination of […]

Joel Ortiz, a twenty-year-old college student from California accepted a plea deal and now faces a ten-year prison term for his SIM Swapping Attacks. Ortiz was arrested last year for stealing more than five million dollars in cryptocurrency. Roughly forty victims were affected. SIM swapping involves attackers posing as their target and soliciting a SIM […]

Valentine’s Day week was not a good week for dating sites. Three online dating sites, OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, and Jack’d, all suffered an array of security incidents. TechCrunch reported on Sunday that OkCupid has been dealing with a rise in account takeovers. Hackers are then hackers changing the account email address and password, making […]