Petronella Cybersecurity News

Don’t let even a little HIPAA slip go unnoticed.  Presence Health of Chicago was recently fined nearly half a million dollars for failing to alert patients about some missing information. The incident goes back to a paper operating room schedule that went missing in 2013.  The schedule had the names, birthdates and other health information […]

Though it started out as a simple blogging platform, WordPress has grown to become one of the most popular content management system used in building all kinds of websites, powering over 74.6 million sites.  Recently, however, nearly two million sites have been hacked. The attack, which replaces the content of the website with a message […]

With Windows-based PCs being much more widely used, hackers have focused their efforts on them much more than they have on Apple Mac computers.  That, however, is starting to change. One example of this is that Word macro malware has recently been discovered on Macs.  If you’re not familiar with what that is, a macro is […]

Fileless malware, which doesn’t need to copy files or folders to a hard drive to be executed, was first detected in 2014, it hasn’t hit the mainstream until now.  And hit it has, having infected more than 140 financial institutions across the world. Fileless malware is injected into and run from the RAM of processes […]

Last week we reported about two cases of CEO fraud, where an employee sent sensitive information to a data thief posing as someone high up in a company.  Now we’ve got two more. The victims were Campbell County Health in Wyoming and eHealthInsurance.  In both cases, a thief was able to pass themselves off as […]

If you’re looking to get free access to Netflix and come across an app that claims to have leaked Netflix accounts for you to use, don’t fall to the temptation to download it.  It’s actually ransomware. The program is called the Netflix Login Generator and purports to let you use other people’s Netflix login credentials […]

A police department was recently hit with ransomware.  When they decided not to pay the ransom, eight years worth of evidence was lost. A statement released last week by the Cockrell Hill Police Department (a suburb of Dallas, TX) said that the number of affected cases should be pretty small, saying that a lot of […]

Licking County, Ohio took a licking recently.  (Sorry, I couldn’t help it.)  The county’s offices, including the police, were almost totally shut down due to a ransomware infection. There’s been no disclosure as of yet as to exactly how it happened, but ransomware infections are usually caused by someone opening an attachment in an email.  Sometimes […]

Are you and your cybergeek significant other looking for a movie or show to watch this weekend?  Or maybe you just want to enjoy some good reading that will both inform and entertain.  Either way, here’s a list for you to check out. Dragnet Nation Author: Julia Angwin Medium: Non-fiction Summary: Angwin writes about her […]

What are the most pressing cyber issues facing us today?  What questions need answering in order to come up with a sensible solution? Corporate Complicity The Issue: While most of us rely on large companies such as Google, Apple, etc., to protect our accounts and information. Question Raised: How can we be sure that these […]

You know that annoying little kid who hits a growth spurt and then seemingly overnight transforms from a nuisance into a menacing bully? That bully is ransomware, the growth spurt was 2016, and it doesn’t appear that 2017 will be any easier. Ransomware was not kind as a child; in the beginning, the strategy involved […]

Think you are up-to-date on your Cyberknowledge? Take this quiz to find out! Noteworthy Cyberactivists ___ 1. This key player is the director of cybersecurity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has researched malware and coordinated security training initiatives. ___ 2. An outspoken digital security and privacy buff, this person gained notoriety after leaking NSA […]

Aaaah, tax season is upon us:  Headaches, Deadlines and Cybercriminals, oh my! Fraudulent tax filing has become one of the most common forms of cybercrime over the last decade,  and it does not appear to be getting much better.   You may wonder how this information attained by the hackers. Sometimes it is phished directly […]

16,000 homes and businesses are set to learn about our book, How HIPAA Can Crush Your Medical Practice, in the pages of the magazine Suburban Living.  Make sure to grab a copy, especially if you work in the medical field!

Two instances of CEO fraud were announced yesterday.  One victim was a county in Kansas; the other a hospital. In the first instance, George S. James of Brookhaven, Georgia passed himself off as the CEO of a company requesting payments totaling $566,000 from Sedgwick County, Kansas.  The payment was made, but the county later found out […]

By now, people are becoming more familiar with the term IoT, or the Internet of Things, where everything from cars to refrigerators to light bulbs are connected to the Internet.  Just a few months ago, hackers took over IoT devices to perform DDoS attacks against large websites and services.  What does that mean for the future of […]

The Washington Post published a document that appears to be a draft of an executive order from President Donald Trump this past Friday.  The goal of the EC is to review the nation’s cybersecurity. The report, which can be read in full here, assigns a team to be led by the Secretary of Defense with […]

The phone rings.  The number isn’t familiar, but the area code is, so you decide to answer the call. You answer: “Hello?” “Can you hear me?” the voice on the other end of the line asks, loud and clear. Don’t answer, because if you do, you could be authorizing charges to your credit card or […]

A new Trojan allows hackers to hide their IP addresses, allowing them to carry out whatever nefarious online deeds they like, by turning Linux machines into proxy servers. Linux.Proxy.10, the name of the Trojan, was discovered in December by cybersecurity firm Doctor Web.  They have since found thousands of infected machines, but they expect to find […]

We wrote a post about a form of ransomware called ‘Popcorn Time’ that delivered the encryption key to the original victim if they spread it to two other people. The hackers behind popcorn time explained through the ransomware that they were collecting ransoms because they were Syrian refugees who had lost everything in the Syrian […]