Petronella Cybersecurity News

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Cyber Monday has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year with this year’s sales topping expectations by reaching a record $3.39 billion. More than 85% of online shoppers do at least some of their buying on a smartphone and consequently, thieves are exploiting those devices to steal people’s personal information. One way […]

A recently discovered vulnerability in Firefox and Tor browsers that de-anonymizes users has been fixed in a newly published patch by Mozilla. While the bug appears to only be actively exploited on Windows based systems, anyone running OS X or Linux should immediately patch their systems, because it can affect them as well. Mozilla was […]

A newly discovered exploit has the possibility to open up Linux users running Fedora and possibly other Linux versions to backdoors, key loggers and other drive-by types of malware by attacking a vulnerability in GStreamer decoder for the FLIC file format. Chris Evans, the security researcher behind the exploit, was able to go after the […]

The MailChimp email newsletter service was recently attacked by hackers who infiltrated their subscriber database and sent out emails containing malicious links to users. The emails appeared to be from companies that used MailChimp to outsource their newsletter distribution. The phony emails originate from an administrator account, alleging to be invoices utilizing Quickbooks. Clicking the […]

As part of their crackdown, federal regulators have issued their 13th major HIPAA enforcement this year. The University of Massachusetts Amherst were given a $650,000 fine and a corrective action plan to fix the issues found by the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. The agency went out of their […]

For the most part, experts agree that the cost of maintaining a cyber warfare operation will go down as time goes on. Where they begin to disagree is in whether these costs will drop to a degree that would allow non-state actors like ISIS to get in on the act. With that said there are […]

It appears that the personal data of at least 130,000 US Navy Sailors has been accessed by an unknown hacker. The data accessed includes the Social Security numbers of 134,386 both former and active-duty US sailors. On October 27, Hewlett-Packard notified the Navy that a laptop used by one of their employees working under a […]

Riders using San Francisco’s Municipal Railway (MUNI) got an unexpected Thanksgiving gift on Black Friday, when they discovered “Out of Service” and “Metro Free” signs posted on ticket machines that afternoon and Saturday. It appears that MUNI’s computerized fare system was the victim of a ransomware attack that ultimately forced it to shut down. Like most ransomware, […]

We have all read about the nonperishable nature of medical data. Whether our medical histories or intellectual property for the next wonder drug, when the bad guys have that data, it is not easy to recover. Why is medical data being stolen? Is it a target or simply collateral damage as part of a different […]

Watch out for what you’re watching on your iPhone!  Watching a short video on your iPhone can cause it to lock up and force a reset. The video, which is only five seconds long, is making its way around the internet.  Whether you finish watching the video or close it up, it starts a loop […]

The hacking group known as The Dark Overlord claims to have hacked Gorilla Glue, maker of a popular super-strong adhesive.  In a chat with the website Motherboard, The Dark Overlord claims to have “everything they ever created.” The hackers say they have over 500GB of data from the company.  This includes contracts, financials, presentations and […]

A recent study of companies that had been hit by ransomware attacks in the last year revealed some very interesting and frightening numbers. Ransomware gets through 95% of ransomware attacks bypassed firewalls. 77% bypassed email filtering. 52% bypassed anti-malware software. You’re not doing enough 81% of IT security workers surveyed were confident in backup solutions […]

Most people don’t give a second thought to leaving their computer alone for a bit, feeling secure that if it’s locked and password-protected, nobody’s going to be able to do anything with it.  A new device called PoisonTap can bypass a locked computer, and it only costs about $5. With PoisonTap, created by a hacker […]

Want to hack a Linux computer?  It’s takes just over a minute and it’s so simple a toddler could do it.  (Not that a toddler would know what to do once they’ve got access.) On many Linux boxes, including those using Debian andFedora, local or in the cloud, all you have to do is hold down […]

A DDoS (Domain Denial of Service) attack happens when a network is flooded with requests.  One common way to do this is for hackers to hijack a bunch of internet-enabled devices, from computers to routers to webcams, and send traffic to one place to overload it.  Now, however, you can accomplish a DDoS against your […]

There’s no question that a lot of people have been paying close attention to the presidential election this year.  Reports of Russian hackers and accusations of a a rigged election have put election security under more scrutiny than usual. The US government has several departments on high alert, including the FBI, the Justice Department and […]