RansomwareNewz Desk – Bad Rabbit Special
Welcome to RWNZ outta Boston where, of course, the big ransomware news of the last
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RansomwareNewz Desk – Bad Rabbit Special
Welcome to RWNZ outta Boston where, of course, the big ransomware news of the last 48 hours is Bad Rabbit – the latest cyberattack that’s sweeping across Europe. After parts of the United Kingdom were recently battered by Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian, IT professionals are battening down the hatches at the prospect of another huge ransomware attack. But could Bad Rabbit rival WannaCry and Petya/NotPetya in size and scope, or is it a storm in a teacup? Let’s take a closer look by jumping… DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE The Bad Rabbit outbreak appears to have started in Russia and
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In other RansomwareNewz: Sex, Crime, Nudity & Revenge!
While news in the cybersecurity world is dominated by Bad Rabbit, we knew that mentions of sex, nudity, crime and revenge would grab your attention like a President might grab a *****, and today’s RansomwareNewz has it all, just like a Shakespearian play… only without the murder and ghosts but with sixteen century insults like… YOU SCURVY-RIDDEN, POCK-MARKED, MAGGOT-BRAINED CUTLET MAKER We begin where Cybercrime meets a more traditional crime – well, one that involves the physical theft. They didn’t have ATM machines in the 1500’s but a suspiciously Shakespearian-sounding malware called Cutlet Maker is being hawked on the dark web
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Ransomware, Data Breaches, I.D.Theft & The Future
If you thought the Equifax data breach was as bad as digital security got… think again. The Atlanta-based credit report company only leaked the personal information of 143 million accounts – that’s almost one out of every two Americans but Yahoo managed to lose the email addresses, birthdates, telephone numbers and passwords of THREE BILLION subscriber’s details. THAT’S ALMOST HALF THE WORLD! To make matters worse, while Georgia State laws meant Equifax bosses could keep news of the hack quiet for over a month (while they sold company shares) the Yahoo cyber attack occurred in 2013 but wasn’t disclosed until December 2016. Yahoo’s breach isn’t
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RansomwareNewz Desk – Equifax, Russian Kangaroos, NATO
Welcome, welcome, welcome to RansomwareNewz straight outta Boston. We begin with news about Equifax, where things have gone from bad to worse to Dante’s ninth level of hell! No, RWNZ hasn’t recruited John Oliver but (trendsetters that we are!) hacking stories have become the subject of entire episodes of HBO’s Last Week Tonight. In case you missed Sunday night’s report on the Equifax data breach which placed 140 million Americans in danger of identity theft, here it is in its full glory: WHEN WILL THEY LEARN? And this news just in – Equifax has been hit again, this time by malvertising. Security
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6 Ways to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft
Identity theft is nothing new, from the case of Arnaud du Tilh – a French peasant who was executed for impersonating Martin Guerre in the 16th Century to Frank Abagnale’s exploits as a fake airline pilot in the 1960’s, as documented in Steven Spielberg’s excellent Catch Me If You Can. Until recently, identity theft was only for ultra cocky confidence tricksters like The Talented Mr Ripley, but since the world went digital, everyone is wide open to having their identity stolen by criminals and cybercriminals alike. According to the 2016 Identity Fraud Study, 13.1 million Americans were victims of identity fraud
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Trump declares October Cybersecurity Awareness Month, 13 years too late
In the past week or so, President Trump has labeled NFL players who take a knee in peaceful protest “sons of bitches” and disrespectful to the flag while colluding with a foreign, enemy government. He has shown disdain for Puerto Ricans and it’s emerged that he has even been called a “moron” by his own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. But every so often, he gets something right – I mean, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, right? Last week, the most unpresidential president ever “proclaimed” in a White House Press Release that October 2017
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Fight Ransomware like you’re defending your Castle
If you haven’t already noticed, we love our metaphors here at RansomwareNewz HQ and often find the easiest way to explain security and tech issues to laymen is by including easily understandable conversational landmarks – often sports or TV or movie analogies. And, after the authors of the Locky malware peppered their VB script with Game of Thrones references, that got us thinking… Ransomware is, after all, the modern-day equivalent of catapulting a dead, decaying cow into your computer network. BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS Before you go thinking that we’ve lost the plot, the briefest of history lessons – Some
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RansomwareNewz Desk – Equifax And FedEx Are Fed Up
FEDEX ARE THOROUGHLY FED UP FedEx may have acquired Dutch shipping company TNT Express last year, but we here at the RansomwareNewz Desk have always wanted FedEx to merge with rivals UPS so they can re-name their company in line with how their parcel-less customers often feel – FedUp. Their employees look more happy with the news, though… Joking aside, FedEx now have a much better reason to be fed up – the Memphis-based delivery company has revealed that this summer’s NotPetya ransomware attack (which used a Windows exploit stripped from an NSA leak) that affected newly acquired TNT Express
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Which industries will Ransomware hackers strike next?
They’ve taken hospitals, power plants, oil and gas companies and governmental departments offline… no, we’re not talking about Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s plans for selling off America to the highest bidder (Moscow and Beijing) – we’re talking about Ransomware hackers. In the last couple of years, Ransomware has gone from minor pain in the backside to billion dollar industry. So where are their botnets, spearfishing emails and malware going to strike next? WHICH INDUSTRIES ARE THE MOST ATTACKED? Earlier this year, the NTT Security’s Global Threat Intelligence Report – the most comprehensive report of its kind, based on
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Get to know your Hackers! The Psychology of Ransomware
Shut your eyes and imagine a hacker. Thanks to TV shows like CSI: Cyber and the above still from Mr Robot, you’ve maybe just drawn a mental picture of an anti-social, hoodie-wearing male between 15 and 30 years of age sitting in his mom’s darkened basement surrounded by monitors and wires, right? Well, you’re half right – because “the most visible breed of computer cracker is an “obsessive middle-class white male, between 12 and 28 years old, with few social skills and a possible history of abuse”. That was the controversial conclusion of Canadian psychologist Marc Rogers in his “Psychology of
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RansomwareNewz – The Rocky, Locky Horror Picture Show
Welcome to the RansomwareNewz Desk, where we’ll be bringing you all you need to stay up to date and informed about everything ransomy, wary and newsy. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE First, it’s off to Russia via New York and The Late Show, where last week, host Stephen Colbert’s opening monologue contained a piece about hackers. Save for the Hillary Clinton/DNC e-mail leak and one more minor news story which escapes us, it’s the first time (we can think of) that hackers have been given airtime on a major chat show. The news was that Russian cyberspying groups like Energetic Bear
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The Ghost in the Shell
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU… Wrote George Orwell in the nightmare dystopian future of his book, 1984 and while the novel’s idea that government ministries could also watch you through your “telescreen” thankfully didn’t come to pass, today they can still track your every move. Yes, that’s a scary thought but, in their defense, governments mostly use public surveillance for good – to catch criminals and terrorists. CCTV cameras can provide crucial evidence and as some say, “if you don’t do anything wrong, you’ve nothing to worry about.” But here’s a scarier idea… what if those self-same criminals were the
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First Ransomware. Then Cyber Warfare!
Societies need enemies, so the governments of the world must have real and invented boogeymen – the idea being that we all play happy families. It doesn’t work and yet, from the 1950’s through to 1990, The Russians were deemed a threat to our very existence. Then, Communism was the enemy. Then it was the war on drugs and terror. Now it’s Rogue Nations like North Korea. Next, it will be aliens. The truth of the matter is, no government was ever gonna launch a nuclear strike first, not even Kim Jong-Un or Donald Trump – that would just be
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RansomwareNewz Desk – The IRS, FBI & NHS
Hello, good evening and welcome to The Ransomware Newzdesk, our new, weekly, two-minute roundup bringing the lowdown on hacking, trojans, malware and all things ransomware from around the world to keep you informed, edu-ma-cated and secure. THE INLAND REVENUE E-MAIL SCAM We begin in the good ‘ole US of A where this week, the IRS issued an urgent warning about a new scheme targeting honest, American taxpayers… so at least President Trump will be safe from attack! A bogus e-mail, featuring both the IRS and FBI’s badges informs recipients they must fill out a questionnaire within ten days. Click the link and
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THE TOP 10 RANSOMWARE TWEETS AND MEMES OF ALL TIME!
Before May of this year, most non-techies had never heard of ransomware but when the Wannacry outbreak infected Britain’s hospital computers, Germany’s rail network and Spain’s main telecoms provider, everyone soon sat up and started taking network security more seriously. So today we’re counting down the ten most hilarious, visionary and ironic ransomware tweets and memes from around the world, including some eye-opening truths about other countries… At Number 10 is a popular ransomware themes – how Linux just bosses Windows at overall network security. South Korean company Nayana may have something to say about that after they paid a
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