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A recent report from Wired reveals that a week after a ransomware attack shut down Colonial Pipeline halting fuel distribution on the East Coast, the company paid a reported $5 million dollar ransom to regain control of their systems and resume operations. The payoff may lead to future ransomware attacks, as one expert notes: “Unfortunately, it’ll help keep United States critical infrastructure providers in the crosshairs. If a sector proves to be profitable, they’ll keep on hitting it.”

Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid almost $5 million to the hackers responsible for the cyberattack that forced the shutdown of its gas infrastructure.Colonial Pipeline paid the ransom amount using cryptocurrency within hours of the attack, highlighting the pressure the company faced to get gas flowing again to customers on the East Coast, according to Bloomberg.This contradicts reports from earlier this week that the company had no plans of paying a fee to decrypt important data files and help get the gas pipeline up and running again.

The material suggests that Gaetz’s father was told his son’s legal problems could go away if he gave $25 million to help secure the release of Iranian hostage Bob Levinson. --- The scandal swirling around Rep. Matt Gaetz took a stunning turn Wednesday with the news that a former Air Force intelligence official and a Florida lawyer tried to get the congressman’s dad to cough up $25 million that would be used to free American Bob Levinson from Iranian custody—and somehow release Gaetz from a federal sex-crimes investigation. And if that wasn’t enough, here’s one more strange fact: Levinson was...

An alleged orgy with prostitutes. Accusations of sex with an underage girl. A trophy photo of a woman wearing only a hula hoop. And a convoluted extortion plot involving a likely dead American hostage in Iran. Even by Florida standards, the Matt Gaetz saga is downright bizarre — and getting weirder by the day. Before this week, the young Sunshine State congressman and ally of former President Donald Trump was best known, like his mentor, for his ambitious conservatism and promontory coiffure. But this week, the Republican has faced a daily flurry of scandalous ­headlines. Most seriously, he is being...

Click here to read the full articleWe would­n’t be sur­prised if Big Tech was behind this in some form… Hack­ers are for plat­forms like this.The social media site Gab blamed “oli­garch tyrants” who keep the US “under occu­pa­tion” for being forced offline, after they refused to pay a ran­som in Bit­coin to a hack­er who had pil­fered giga­bytes of user data through an exploit.“We took the site down to inves­ti­gate a secu­ri­ty breach,” Gab announced on Mon­day after­noon via their Twit­ter account. Users try­ing to log into Gab were greet­ed with an “inter­nal error” mes­sage and told to try again.“Banks...

An American woman and her safari guide who were kidnapped in a Ugandan wilderness park and held five days by armed captors were returned unharmed on Sunday after a ransom was paid for their release, authorities said. Kim Sue Endicott of Southern California and her tour guide, Congolese national Jean-Paul Mirenge Remezo, were freed in a negotiated handover, officials said.

The American citizen -- a woman -- and a Ugandan driver were kidnapped at gunpoint at Queen Elizabeth National Park in southwest Uganda, while on a game drive on Tuesday evening, a statement released by the agencies said. Police have dispatched an "elite squad" from the Tourism Police to the park to actively pursue the gunmen and have closed all exit areas on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The American citizen was abducted alongside four people but the unnamed four were freed while the American and her driver were taken from the park, Ofwondo Opondo,...

White Greater Double THE OFFICE OF THE TIME gives us, at the close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. These heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honor of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the world. “Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, who hast wrought salvation by the hand of a woman:” the Church thus introduces the history of the heroine who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai’s niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and her intercession. The Queen of heaven, in her peerless...

President Trump boasted Thursday night that he secured the freedom of three American captives from North Korea for no money, while claiming that former President Barack Obama paid $1.8 billion to Iran to release U.S. hostages two years ago. Speaking in Indiana, Trump exulted in the return of the three Americans whom he greeted earlier in the day. “We didn’t pay for them,” Trump said. “They came out for nothing. Those hostages came out with respect.” Referring to Obama’s negotiations with Iran, Trump said, “Obama paid $1.8 billion for hostages. Can you believe that? ” He was talking about what...

Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be...

Pavel Lerner, a blockchain expert, was taken hostage by masked gunmen on December 26Kiev: Kidnappers in Ukraine have released an employee at a United Kingdom-registered cryptocurrency exchange after getting more than $1 million (Dh3.67 million) in bitcoins as ransom, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister told Reuters on Friday. Pavel Lerner, a leading analyst and blockchain expert, was abducted by unknown masked people on December 26, according to a statement by his company, EXMO Finance, on its website. “This is the first such case in Ukraine linked to bitcoins,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said...

White Greater Double THE Office of the Time gives us, at the close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. These heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honor of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the world. “Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, who hast wrought salvation by the hand of a woman:” the Church thus introduces the history of the heroine who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai’s niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and her intercession. The Queen of heaven, in her peerless...

The NHS has been hit by a major cyber attack, with hackers demanding a ransom. Hospitals are understood to have lost the use of phonelines and computers, with some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere. At some hospitals patients are being told not to come to A&E with all non-urgent operations cancelled. (truncated due to copywrite restrictions)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania’s top state Senate Democrat said Monday that no ransom has been paid to resolve a cyberattack that shut down the caucus’ network and prompted an FBI investigation. Senate Democrats’ computer network, including their email system, remained inaccessible Monday, three days after the “ransomware” attack was discovered by technology staff who received an alert that the network had been breached. Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, would not say what sort of ransom had been demanded, but he said none had been paid, and he and other Senate Democrats said they were not inclined to do...

Pirates have kidnapped seven Russians and one Ukrainian after attacking the cargo ship the BBC Caribbean off the coast of Nigeria, the Russian embassy said on its official Twitter account.

Rubio spox: Senator looks forward to helping Trump shred Iran deal Senior Obama administration officials in their final days in office are seeking to cover up key details of the Iran nuclear deal from Congress, according to documents and sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about continued efforts by the White House to block formal investigations into secret diplomacy with Tehran that resulted in a $1.7 billion cash payment by the United States. As leading members of Congress petition the Obama administration for answers about what many describe as a $1.7 billion “ransom” payment to Iran, Obama administration...

Thursday's cordial meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama was a reassuring ritual of democracy. But Obama was far from convincing when he told Trump "we are now going to do everything we can to help you succeed." There are some highly disparate ideas here about what constitutes success, both foreign and domestic. There are also big areas in which one might reasonably wonder if Obama and his team are in a quandary over the prospect of a Trump administration inheriting the internal records of the most transparent administration ever. Take, for instance, the Iran nuclear deal, Obama's...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Wendy Mueller was standing at the copper sink in her gorgeous, historic Leesburg, Va., home last Wednesday afternoon when the knife she was holding slipped and cut her thumb. Then the phone rang. It wasn’t a number she recognized, but distracted by the bleeding thumb, she answered it. Mom always answers the phone. She heard screaming. It sounded exactly like her 23-year-old daughter’s voice, begging for help. Then an unfamiliar voice announced, “We have your daughter.”

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's highest court upheld a U.S. government subcontractor's 15-year prison sentence for crimes against the state on Friday, ending the legal side of a case that has chilled already-icy relations between Washington and Havana. The ruling means 62-year-old Alan Gross, a Maryland native who has been behind bars for more than a year and a half, has no further judicial recourse to appeal his sentence. It leaves him, his family and U.S. officials hoping instead for a release on humanitarian grounds. Gross, who has been behind bars since his arrest in December 2009, was found guilty in...