Petronella Cybersecurity News

As our blog’s history shows, the healthcare industry has become an increasingly popular ransomware target for cybercriminals. With this rise in attacks comes a new industry: Cyber Ransom Liability Insurance. Ransomware attacks began to rise earlier this year, so they are not covered under most standard insurance policies. When choosing a policy, it is important for […]

It was recently reported that credit card skimmers were being found at Walmart stores. Now we have video of skimmers that have been designed to fit invisibly inside an ATM card slot. Unlike old skimmers that were comparatively bulky, these new designs are incredibly thin and slide in over the magnetic strip reader. These new skimmers are impossible […]

With the tragic events that unfolded in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub, a lot of questions about LGBT safety, gun control, and terrorism are being asked. And rightly so. Unfortunately, what has been lost in the tragedy is how HIPAA laws are used and how even those within the medical community often lack proper education […]

Over 100 weaknesses have been found in the Pentagon’s networks and websites.  Fortunately, these hackers were paid to find them. 1400 hackers took part in Hack the Pentagon, a program created by the Department of Defense.  Their goal was to use whitehat hackers to probe for weaknesses with rewards of up to $15,000 for security […]

There have been new revelations about the US government’s spy program thanks to a series of Edward Snowden’s emails to the NSA’s SIGINT Oversight and Compliance Division released due to a Freedom of Information Act request. We’ve warned people time and again how macros embedded within Word documents are a prime attack vector of hackers, […]

This year has seen a massive increase in Ransomware, and with that increase comes increasingly hefty ransoms. Savvy businesses worldwide have begun to stockpile Bitcoins, just to be on the safe side. One UK study, conducted by Citrix and Censuswide, which polled 250 IT managers, showed that a third of those companies have begun to […]

Law enforcement in Russia have carried out the largest ever arrest of hackers in the country after rounding up 50 people that were allegedly responsible for stealing more than $25 million from Russian financial institutions. Russia’s Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service (FSB) carried out raids across the country that seized computer equipment, financial documents, […]

Unfortunately for Dropbox, last week several identity theft protection services including LifeLock wrongly reported that 73 million usernames and passwords had been stolen in a data breach on the cloud storage company. The problem is that Dropbox didn’t have a data breach, Tumblr did. The source of the mistake was the identity monitoring firm CSID. […]

Halfway through the fiscal year, the top 2016 hacker trend has become clear: ransomware. PhishMe, a threat management team, reports that ransomware attacks have increased 56% since 2015, and ransomware is attached to as much as 93% of all phishing emails. Why the trend? Ransomware is more efficient, easier to use and safer for the hacker. Moving Target The cybercriminals of […]

Infoblox DNS Threat Index (a leading indicator of worldwide malicious Domain Name System threats) reported in Q1 2016 an increased threat of almost 10% over the previous quarter, resulting in an all-time high of 137. This is largely due to a 3500% increase in ransomware domains recorded in Q1 2016.  Cybercriminals and hackers use these domains to for nefarious activities […]

Florida-based business, Southeast Eye Institute, P.A. (d.b.a. Eye Associates of Pinellas) reported that as many as 87,314 individuals may have had  personal information stolen. This includes names, addresses, phone numbers, D.O.B., SSN, and insurance information.  Eye Associates of Pinellas was using medical software designed by, Bizmatics, a third-party provider.  Bizmatics notified Eye Associates on March 30, 2016, a  that […]

We already heard that machinery in US power plants were vulnerable to attacks from hackers and now the Department of Homeland Security has put out a warning saying just that. The department’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) is concerned that the ESC 8832 data controller could be taken over by an attacker with the most basic […]

Raleigh Orthopedic Clinic (ROC) of North Carolina is paying for its violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 Privacy Rule, for allegedly sharing private and protected patient information with a potential business partner. $750,000, to be exact. The Office of Civil Rights (a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human […]

The “Mega-hacks” of major health care industry players like Anthem, Inc and Premera Blue Cross, that were so popular in early 2016, seem to be giving way to attacks on smaller, more vulnerable businesses. A good example of this trend can be seen in the most recent industry breach of an 11-physician practice in Katy, […]

Since 2010, the number of data breaches in the healthcare industry has been steadily on the rise. Consequently, a new study out by the Ponemon Institute has found that such breaches will end up costing the industry 6.2 billion dollars. The source of the breaches? Employees. According to the study, the thing that most organizations […]

In an attempt to update dental procedure codes, the American Dental Association may have inadvertently infected thousands of dental offices across the United States with malware. As part of a mailer sent to ADA members, the thumb drives were intended to contain codes that offices use to keep track of procedures for billing and insurance […]

It appears there’s a new form of ransomware that was clearly created by hackers who are fans of the movie “Saw”. Going by the name Jigsaw, not only does it encrypt files and ask for money to unlock them, it also begins to delete your files while raising the ransom demand. Taking its name from the […]

Hackers were able to get into the systems of the Bangladesh central bank and steal $81 million dollars thanks to one of the most ridiculous security lapses ever seen: cheap routers. After being alerted to a data breach in February, law enforcement realized that not only were the bank’s computers connected to the SWIFT global […]

In the past year ransomware attacks, malware that encrypts files then demands payment in Bitcoins to get a key to unlock them, have not only increased in number of attacks, but also the types of organizations hit. Medical facilities have been a big target. Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles paid about $17,000 to hackers […]

There’s been a recent rash malware that utilizes JavaScript-based downloaders to install ransomware on victims’ computers. Like most ransomware, it then encrypts their files and demands payment in Bitcoins to get a key to unlock them. It’s pretty unusual for anyone to send a Javascript attachment, so users should be on the lookout for any […]