What Would You Do to Save Your Data?

December 22nd, 2016

In the Dark Knight, there is a scene where two ferries full of people cross a river to escape from Gotham before the Joker does something terrible. Unfortunately for the people on the boat, that was exactly what the Joker was planning on. While they’re in the middle of the river both boats lose their […]

Why You Should Bring a Baseball Bat to Your Office

December 21st, 2016

This month, all of the top healthcare security executives got together at the Privacy and Security Forum in Boston to discuss the challenges that the healthcare industry is facing. Joel Brenner, who was a former senior counsel member at the NSA, keynoted the event and made one thing very clear in his speech. The cybersecurity […]

The Most Dangerous Present Under Your Christmas Tree This Year

December 20th, 2016

You’ve secured your network. You’ve made sure dangerous phishing emails won’t ever make it into your inbox. Your data is backed up and secure. You know that hackers are always finding new ways to sneak into private information. Even if you do all these things and are aware of the dangers you face, I have […]

Senate Reactions to Russia’s Election Interference

December 19th, 2016

Two top Senators have begun actively campaigning for a bipartisan Senate select committee to look into the role Russia played in releasing hacked emails from the DNC to influence the recent presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Senator John McCain, a former presidential candidate and current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to […]

Half a Million Medical Victims

December 16th, 2016

Peachtree Orthopedics announced that its systems suffered a data breach back in October, but they didn’t release the number of affected patients.  That number has been now been discovered: 543,879.  The data breach is the sixth largest in the country this year and the largest in the state of Georgia. The Dark Overlord, probably a single […]

Lessons of the Yahoo Data Breach

December 15th, 2016

On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that personal information from one billion user accounts, including names, addresses, passwords, phone numbers, birthdates, and security questions, was stolen. By noon Thursday, Yahoo’s stock had fallen 5% and Verizon’s $4.8 billion purchase of the company appears to be in jeopardy. Right now, it seems Verizon executives and general counsel are […]

Largest Data Theft Ever: One Billion Yahoo Accounts

December 14th, 2016

Yahoo dropped a bomb on its users and stockholders on Wednesday: More than one billion users’ accounts have been stolen in an attack that took place in August of 2013. One billion accounts compromised would mean that this breach far surpasses Myspace’s 360 million accounts and 427 million passwords stolen, making it the largest hack […]

Microsoft Announces End of Support for 2017

December 14th, 2016

Microsoft will be ending or scaling back support for dozens of products starting in 2017.  The list of products includes versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  Here’s a full list: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 2 Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 1 Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011 Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 […]

Obama Administration’s Response to Russia’s Eelction Meddling

December 14th, 2016

The great irony of the 2016 US presidential election is that after all the talk from Donald Trump of it being rigged, when it was all said and done, it’s the Democrats who end up feeling like the election was stolen. Now it seems that behind the scenes the Obama administration wrestled with how to […]

34K Patient Records Hacked

December 14th, 2016

Quest Diagnostics, a forensic clinical lab company, announced earlier this week that they had suffered a cyberattack through their internet app. According to Quest, hackers were able to access the data of 34,000 people through their MyQuest by Care360 app a couple weeks ago.  Accessed data includes names, birth dates and phone numbers in addition to lab […]

Obama Orders Review of Election Hacking

December 9th, 2016

One of the big stories of the recent presidential election was the release of documents from cyberattacks that were commonly blamed on Russia.  President Obama has ordered an investigation into the attacks. The cyberattacks targeted the Democratic Party and gained access to emails that it released to the public.  Russia has denied responsibility and president-elect Donald […]

Mirai is Taking Down the Internet

December 9th, 2016

Do you remember a few months ago when a bunch of major websites went down to a DDoS attack?  It was done with a botnet called Mirai, and it’s still around. Mirai is a kind of malware that finds and co-opts devices to use as its programmer desires.  This group of devices is called a […]

Locky Ransomware Switches from Norse to Egyptian

December 8th, 2016

Locky, a popular strain of ransomware, has used the names of Norse gods like Odin and Thor as their file extensions up to now.  They’ve switched to Egyptian gods with the new .osiris extension.  What else is going on with Locky these days? Osiris is mostly being spread with a phishing technique where an Excel file is […]

Meet the Young Hackers Who Attacked Trump and the BBC

December 8th, 2016

Have you heard of the New World Hackers?  They group claims to have dozens of members from all over, but it’s actually just a core of three people, the youngest and most technical of which is a teenager. The group specializes in DDoS attacks, the most high profile of which knocked the BBC’s website offline for […]

South Korea’s Military Hacked by North Korea

December 6th, 2016

South Korea’s Military Cyber Command, a group set up to protect South Korea against hacking, has been hacked, presumably by North Korea. North Korea had previously been accused of hacking South Korean banks and other institutions, but this is the first time the South Korean military has been a target. Military documents, including confidential information, was […]

Ransomware Shuts Down Hospitals

December 6th, 2016

A ransomware attack caused three hospitals to cancel operations, impacting almost 3,000 patients from October 30 through November 2. The ransomware used was a strain called Globe2 and hit the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust.  A spokesperson for the Trust said that their team took action as soon as the infection was detected, which […]

DDoS Smokescreens

December 5th, 2016

The general consensus up to this point has been that when hackers commit a Distributed Denial of Service  (DDoS) attack, they were taking down networks and system as a way to get attention. It turns out that is actually true, but not for the reasons people originally thought. Apparently, while a business is busy handling […]

Saudi Government Infected

December 5th, 2016

At least six different Saudi Government agencies, including the General Authority of Civil Aviation, has had thousands of their systems crippled in an attack by hackers using the Shamoon virus. With Iran as the most like source of the attack, Shamoon wipes the hard drives of machines it infects. This latest attack is similar to […]

Were Russian Hackers Helping Trump?

December 5th, 2016

The Obama administration is under pressure from members of the Democratic Party to state in clearer terms that Russia’s ultimate goal in interfering with the US election was to help Donald Trump become president. According to new information, the intelligence community is becoming more and more sure that this is the case, but unable to […]

How to Avoid Millions in HIPAA Fines

December 2nd, 2016

If there was ever any doubt whether the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) was focused on the HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, three recent settlements totaling $5.8 million prove they are. Additionally, the OCR has issued its first settlement against one of these Business Associates with a $650,000 fine for […]