Petronella Cybersecurity News

Did you see the University of Minnesota football team’s bowl game boycott? Believe it or not, it could have a major effect on you and your children’s future and privacy. Ten Minnesota players were suspended from their bowl game because of an investigation into an alleged sexual assault. When the players asked for the reason […]

With the year winding down and Christmas and the New Year coming up, it can be easy to forget about 2016 and everything that happened this year. If your holidays are looking great, read our review of 2016 hacking trends to make sure that next year you’ll feel the same way. Ransomware was a top […]

The year isn’t quite over yet, so there could be a few more attacks, but the year of 2015 saw 57 major cyberattacks against healthcare organizations.  2016 is up to 93 as of the middle of December.  That’s a year-to-year increase of 63%, and it will likely get worse. This data was compiled by TrapX […]

Driverless cars have to be one of the most exciting emerging technologies out there. There’s the obvious advantage of being able to work or read or do anything you want while your car drives you, but more importantly auto accidents will plunge once human error is taken out of the equation. There is one very […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, 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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]