Hackers Tried to Cause Saudi Petrochemical Plant Blast: NYT

Cyber-attackers tried to trigger a deadly explosion at a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia in August and failed only because of a code glitch, The New York Times reported. Investigators declined to identify the suspected attackers, but people interviewed by the newspaper unanimously said that it most likely aimed to cause a blast that would have guaranteed…

Olympic Destroyer: who hacked the Olympics?

Long ago, during the Olympic Games, the participating countries halted their wars and put aside their political disputes. Today, the opposite is increasingly likely. The PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games started with a scandal: unknown hackers attacked the servers just before the opening ceremonies and many spectators were unable to attend the ceremonies as they were unable…

Healthcare Experiences Twice the Number of Cyber Attacks As Other Industries

Healthcare has become the second largest sector of the U.S. economy, accounting for 18% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017, and is rivaled only by U.S. Federal Government’s 20% share of GDP in the same year. Not surprisingly, IT spending in healthcare is keeping pace, reaching $100 billion in 2017. As healthcare sector technology spending grows, so does the sector’s…

3 Million New Android Malware Samples Discovered in 2017

More than 3 million new malware samples targeting the Android operating system were discovered in 2017, marking a slight decrease from the previous year, G Data reports. The security firm counted 3,002,482 new Android malware samples during 2017, at an average of 8,225 per day, or 343 new malware samples every hour. Although the number…

Security Awareness Training Top Priority for CISOs

Thirty-five percent of CISOs in the financial sector consider staff training to be the top priority for cyber defense. Twenty-five percent prioritize infrastructure upgrades and network defense. The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) polled more than 100 of its 7,000 global members to produce the first of its planned annual CISO Cybersecurity…

Crypto Mining Malware Infects Thousands of Websites

Hacked Script Infects Several Government Sites with Cryptominer The websites of numerous government, health and education organizations worldwide were infected with a crypto-currency miner over the weekend, after a script running on all of them was maliciously modified. The culprit was Browsealoud, a script developed by Texthelp to add “speech, reading, and translation to websites.”…

The Time to Focus on Critical Infrastructure Security is Now

The world has once again been reminded that the threat of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure systems remains very real. Last month, Britain’s defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, iterated that Russia held the potential for wide disruption and “thousands of deaths” through such attacks. His announcement was the latest indication of increased chatter regarding attacks on critical infrastructure,…