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Users beware: This ransomware poses a threat to precious data. The FBI has issued a warning regarding malicious malware that demands a ransom from victims in order to release their data. Dubbed “Medusa,” the “ransomware-as-a-service” has affected more than 300 known people “from a variety of critical infrastructure sectors” since it was first discovered in 2021, according to a recent advisory penned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. In order to protect themselves, people can follow the agencies’ tips and tricks for securing accounts and personal...

The story is about how older hackers from Russia in their 40's who have been hacking for years and know all the tricks unite with younger hackers, ENglish speaking, who are doing the hacking into corps. and elsewhere.

A congressman has condemned internet trolls currently gloating over the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 'Seems like leftists opposed to killing terrorists in the Middle East support killing CEOs in Midtown Manhattan,' wrote Representative Dean Phillips after Wednesday's murder outside a Hilton hotel in NYC. Phillips, a Democrat who represents 50 year-old Thompson's home district in Minnesota, spoke as online ghouls rejoiced in the cold-blooded execution of the healthcare chief. Among them were one tweeter who wrote: 'Brian Thompson ran a company based off exploiting people during the most vulnerable times in their life. 'I'm not sad he's dead.'...

A teenage boy may be responsible for a ransomware attack that shut down MGM Resorts in Las Vegas last year. The West Midlands Police Department in England confirmed that they arrested an unidentified 17-year-old on Thursday from the town of Walsall ...The attack happened on Sep. 12, 2023 allegedly with a simple 10 minute phone call to a Help desk employee using information obtained from LinkedIn....

The Lockbit ransomware group announced that it had breached the systems of Federal Reserve of the United States and exfiltrated 33 TB of sensitive data, including “Americans’ banking secrets.” The Lockbit ransomware group added the Federal Reserve to the list of victims on its Tor data leak site and threatened to leak the stolen data on 25 June, 2024 20:27:10 UTC. The group hasn’t published any sample of the stolen data. “Federal banking is the term for the way the Federal Reserve of the United States distributes its money. The Reserve operates twelve banking districts around the country which oversee...

The hacking of a UnitedHealth affiliate is a symptom of consolidation within the health care sector, and it’s likely to get even worse.In a bid to win reelection, the Biden administration keeps trying to sell the country on all the supposed benefits of Obamacare. Before continuing their sales campaign, they might want to check in with the doctors’ offices struggling to make payroll.For over a month, the multitrillion-dollar health care sector has had to respond to a hack on a payment processor owned by UnitedHealthGroup, the nation’s largest insurer. Axios reported that hospitals, doctors, medical equipment suppliers, and pharmacies are...

It's nationwide knowledge that in early May the Colonial Pipeline company suffered a severe cyberattack that shut down its pipeline connecting Texas to the East Coast. On June 1, JBS Foods suffered another crippling cyberattack. According to industry estimates, JBS controls 20 percent of the slaughtering capacity for American cattle and hogs. The JBS attack also generated headlines. The FBI and security officials believe two criminal organizations conducted the attacks. Their names sound a bit like those of the sinister super gangs found in James Bond novels. However, these gangs aren't fiction nor are their crimes. A crime group called...

The FBI’s takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 unless paid a ransom. LockBit claims the cache includes documents tied to the county’s ongoing criminal prosecution of former President Trump, but court watchers say teaser documents published by the crime gang suggest a total leak of the Fulton County data could put lives at risk and jeopardize a number of other...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) disclosed today that it infiltrated the world’s second most prolific ransomware gang, a Russia-based criminal group known as ALPHV and BlackCat. The FBI said it seized the gang’s darknet website, and released a decryption tool that hundreds of victim companies can use to recover systems. Meanwhile, BlackCat responded by briefly “unseizing” its darknet site with a message promising 90 percent commissions for affiliates who continue to work with the crime group, and open season on everything from hospitals to nuclear power plants.

About 60 credit unions in the US are experiencing outages because of a ransomware attack on an IT provider the credit unions use, a federal agency said Friday. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the agency that insures deposits at federally insured credit unions, said in a statement to CNN that it was “coordinating with affected credit unions” in the wake of the hack. The full extent of the outage and its impact on credit unions was unclear Friday evening. One of the affected credit unions, New York-based Mountain Valley Federal Credit Union, said that technicians from the hacked IT...

San Bernardino County paid a $1.1 million ransom to hackers who infiltrated the Sheriff's Department computers, officials acknowledged Friday. Last month, the department admitted a hack encrypted many of its files, disrupting systems and blocking access to data. County officials told ABC News on Friday that the county carries insurance for such attacks and its share of the ransom came out to just over $511,000. After negotiating with the hackers, the insurance company and county agreed to pay to restore the system to its full functionality and secure data.

The City of Dallas confirmed that a ransomware attack compromised a number of servers in its system, including the Dallas Police Department's website. Late Monday morning, CBS News Texas' J.D. Miles reported that the outage impacted the department's computer assisted dispatch system, called CAD, which directs police to emergencies and other calls. The issue forced 911 call takers to manually write down instructions for the responding officers, who were only able to respond through their phones and radios. CBS News Texas obtained an image the ransomware note. The hackers claim that they encrypted the city's critical data, and threatened to...

The FBI and Ukrainian police have seized nine cryptocurrency exchange websites that facilitated money laundering for scammers and cybercriminals, including ransomware actors. In its announcement, the FBI says the operation was carried out with the help of the Virtual Currency Response Team, the National Police of Urkaine, and legal prosecutors in the country. The nine websites and their servers seized in this operation are: 24xbtc.com 100btc.pro pridechange.com 101crypta.com uxbtc.com trust-exchange.org bitcoin24.exchange paybtc.pro owl.gold Visiting any of these domains today displays the seizure banner below, alternating its message between Russian and English. [Banner behind the article link above.] The seized sites...

A major ransomware attack compromised a host of sensitive information held by the US Marshals Service, including details about potential targets of investigations and employees of the federal law enforcement agency. The cyberattack was discovered in “a stand-alone USMS system” on Feb. 17 and prompted a forensic investigation by the Department of Justice, said Drew Wade, a spokesperson for the Marshals Service. On Feb. 22, officials from the Marshals Service briefed investigators from the DOJ, who determined the breach was a “major incident” that affected an array of sensitive law enforcement information. “The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information,...

Flights are grounded all across the USA… but why? Everybody knows the proximate cause, but is there a deeper rot at the FAA and our Department of Transportation? You bet! “How could the FAA leave all US domestic flights grounded for the first time since the 9/11 terror attacks?” is the obvious question, after Wednesday’s hot mess at the FAA. Under Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a better question might be, “Yes, but were flights grounded with diversity, equity, and inclusion?” Because DEI is exactly where Buttigieg’s priorities lie — not with the vital business of keeping our transportation infrastructure operating....

UPDATED Rackspace has admitted a ransomware infection was to blame for the days-long email outage that disrupted services for customers. The security snafu took down some of Rackspace's hosted Microsoft Exchange services on Friday afternoon [12/02/2022]. In its most recent update, posted at 0826 Eastern Time on Tuesday [12/06/2022], Rackspace said it has now "determined this suspicious activity was the result of a ransomware incident," and has hired a "leading cyber defense firm to investigate." The company hasn't yet determined what customer data was touched. "If we determine sensitive information was affected, we will notify customers as appropriate," it added.

Payment-seeking software made by Russian hackers was used in three quarters of all the ransomware schemes reported to a US financial crime agency in the second half of 2021, a Treasury Department analysis released on Tuesday (Nov 1) showed. In analysis issued in response to the increase in number and severity of ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure in the United States since late 2020, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said it had received 1,489 ransomware-related filings worth nearly US$1.2 billion in 2021, a 188 per cent jump from the year before. Out of 793 ransomware incidents reported to...

...Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said investigators had seized 63.7 Bitcoins, now valued at about $2.3 million, paid by Colonial (COLPI.UL) after last month's hack of its systems that led to massive shortages at U.S. East Coast gas stations....An affidavit filed on Monday said the FBI was in possession of a private key to unlock the hackers' Bitcoin wallet. It was unclear how the FBI gained access to this key...."Today, we've turned the tables on DarkSide," said Monaco, referring to a ransomware group widely believed to have been behind the crippling fuel pipeline attack.

Among many claimed benefits, cryptocurrencies supposedly offer two significant benefits over fiat currencies: 1) autonomy and 2) discretion. This past week, the U.S. federal government took them both down. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a press statement that it had seized $2.3 million in cryptocurrency. The seizure was the result of the FBI's Colonial Pipeline investigation. As a reminder, Colonial Pipeline, the U.S.'s largest pipeline for refined oil products, was the victim of a cyberattack. Against the U.S.'s wishes and policies, Colonial Pipeline paid millions in ransom to retake control of the pipeline. According to the FBI, they had...

Hackers crippled computer networks across multiple government agencies, including the Finance MinistryCosta Rica has declared a state of emergency after ransomware hackers crippled computer networks across multiple government agencies, including the Finance Ministry. The official declaration, published on a government website Wednesday, said that the attack was “unprecedented in the country” and that it interrupted the country’s tax collection and exposed citizens’ personal information. The hackers initially broke into the Finance Ministry on April 12, it said. They were able to spread to other agencies, including the Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications and the National Meteorological Institute. Leon Weinstok,...