Petronella Cybersecurity News

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, 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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s not available to the general public, but Positive Technologies, a Russian cybersecurity firm, has figured out how to exploit a privilege available only to governments that involves shutting down the CPU’s Management Engine master controller. What does all that mean? Well, ME is part of the processor, which means it can’t ever be fully shut […]

As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When it comes to cybersecurity, you might not even be in charge of your weakest link. Radiology Center, a third-party partner of the McLaren Medical Group, was notified that their computer system had been hacked. They discovered that a number […]

The IRS is after you, and they want you to fill out an FBI questionnaire. So says a new phishing scam, anyway. The email reads as follows: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The government agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury. The […]

Hong Kong zombie stocks are on the rise, and thanks to hackers they’ve never been more dangerous. Confused? Don’t worry, we will explain. In all stories involving zombies, the threat begins when a virus turns someone who should be dead into a walking carrier of the virus. The carrier spreads the virus when it tries […]

“There is a connection between Kaspersky and Russian intelligence, and I’m absolutely certain that Russian intelligence would want to use that connection to their advantage.” “I don’t use Kaspersky Lab products… I would not [advise my family to use it].” Those quotes are from former deputy director of the CIA Michael Morell and Trump administration […]