Free Republic

US lawmakers have recently begun discussing the need for a federal plan to find out what types of cash payments are made after ransomware attacks. Cyberattacks have been ramping up in recent months, with each one underscoring the nation’s under-preparedness. The digital infrastructure of private companies and government organizations have plenty of vulnerabilities, and their responses to damaging attacks have been frantically improvised. Worsening the situation are the significant delays in responding to cyberattacks, an inevitable consequence of the fact that the federal government has no uniform approach to combating malicious hackers. In May 2021, $4.4 million in Bitcoin was...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the cyberattack suffered by the Colonial Pipeline Company “an act of war” and said the U.S. should respond by killing whoever was responsible for it.“We ought to pass a law immediately that makes this kind of hacking subject to a death penalty, and the law should include a provision that the president, through a judicial process, should be able to order the killing of anybody overseas who’s doing this,” Mr. Gingrich, a Republican, said Monday on Fox News while speaking about the ransomware attack that recently disrupted the Colonial Pipeline system.Mr. Gingrich, 77, who...

A ransomware attack has hit at least 20 local government entities in Texas, the State's Department of Information Resources (DIR) announced on Friday. When a ransomware attack occurs, a computer cannot be utilized until a ransom is paid.The Texas Division of Emergency Management is currently assisting. As of now, DIR, the Texas Military Department and the Texas A&M University System’s Cyber Response and Security Operations Center have deployed teams to the "most critically impacted jurisdictions." As requests come in, other resources will be implemented. The goal is to provide computing services and expertise that would get local entities back online, The...

This year's global outbreaks of the WannaCry and Petya/GoldenEye ransomware variants shook the tech and business world. Traditionally designed as a for-profit malware scheme, ransomware encrypts important files on computers and demands a ransom to give you access to them again. These cyberattacks mainly targeted outdated and unpatched Windows machines, which are vulnerable to a variety of NSA hacking tools leaked earlier this year. Since the flaws are wormable, the attacks even prompted Microsoft to make an unusual move - it released a patch for the now obsolete and unsupported operating systems to protect the apparent millions of users still...

Netflix isn't alone: Agencies and others are balancing demands for money against the fears of stolen data ending up online. Phones are the lifeblood of a talent agency like UTA, but on April 11, its IT department discovered an intruder lurking in the voicemail system and computer network and quickly decided to shut them down, sending agents to conduct business on their iPads. Soon thereafter a demand from a hacker arrived: Pay a ransom or watch the agency's most confidential data get posted online. It turns out UTA was lucky — an outside cybersecurity firm was brought in and, after...