Cryptomining: the new lottery for cybercriminals
Cryptomining has surpassed even ransomware as the revenue generator of choice according to a Cisco Talos report, which claims crypto-mining botnets can earn hackers up to $500 dollars a day and a dedicated effort could equate to more than $100,000 dollars a year. Representing the perfect balance of stealth and wealth for cybercriminals and some unscrupulous,…
Malware ‘Cocktails’ Raise Attack Risk
Malware mash-ups hiding in encrypted traffic are boosting attack numbers and increasing the danger to data, according to recent reports. It was good while it lasted. The drop in malware attack attempts seen in 2016 – from 8.19 billion in 2015 to 7.87 billion – is but a fond memory, as 2017 saw more than…
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…
Top Experts Warn Against ‘Malicious Use’ of AI
Artificial intelligence could be deployed by dictators, criminals and terrorists to manipulate elections and use drones in terrorist attacks, more than two dozen experts said Wednesday as they sounded the alarm over misuse of the technology. In a 100-page analysis, they outlined a rapid growth in cybercrime and the use of “bots” to interfere with…
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.”…
Cisco Aware of Attacks Exploiting Critical Firewall Flaw
Cisco informed customers on Wednesday that it has become aware of malicious attacks attempting to exploit a recently patched vulnerability affecting the company’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software. No other information has been provided by the networking giant, but it’s worth noting that aproof-of-concept (PoC) exploit designed to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on devices running…
What Super Bowl LII Ads Can Teach You about Privileged Account Security
It is the day after Super Bowl LII, and sadly, Patriots fans did not wake up savoring the good feeling of their sixth Super Bowl win with Tom Brady. In our household, there is now a temporary ban on sports radio until talk of this Super Bowl dies down over the airwaves. Although the game…
The Price of Cybercrime: 9 Years in One Case, 6 Months in Another
Travon Williams, 33, was sentenced by the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to 9 years in jail for his role in a credit card fraud and identity theft scheme. For more than two years, Williams led a gang that purchased thousands of stolen credit and debit card numbers from the dark web….
Six Months in Jail for University Email Hacker
A man who accessed over 1,000 email accounts maintained by a New York City-area university to download in appropriate photos and videos was sentenced to 6 months in prison this week. The man, Jonathan Powell, 30, of Phoenix, Arizona, pled guilty to the charges on August 9, 2017, in Manhattan federal court before United States…
Cyber attacks surge, ransomware leading the way
The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) found that cyber incidents targeting businesses nearly doubled from 82,000 in 2016 to 159,700 in 2017. Since the majority of cyber incidents are never reported, OTA believes the actual number in 2017 could easily exceed 350,000. “Surprising no one, 2017 marked another ‘worst year ever’ in data breaches and cyber incidents around the world,”…