Cybersecurity News

Weekly Summary of the Top Stories in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity News: November 15, 2021

Senators add CISA cyberattack/ransomware reporting amendment to defense bill

ZD Net, Jonathan Greig
“The amendment would update current federal government cybersecurity laws to improve coordination between federal agencies, force the government to take a risk-based approach to security, as well as require all civilian agencies to report all cyber-attacks to CISA, and major cyber incidents to Congress.” Read More

Mobile banking boom presents new risk, security concerns

SC Magazine, Karen Hoffman
“This is a massive target opportunity, to make scams so appealing to fraudsters. No longer are you looking for unauthorized access from an unusual device and location. Now you have to spot the anomaly within a legitimate user transaction that the victims themselves are orchestrating.” Read More

A stalker’s wishlist: PhoneSpy malware destroys Android privacy

ZD Net, Charlie Osborne
“Even though thousands of South Korean victims have fallen prey to the spyware campaign, it is unclear whether they have any connections with each other. But with the ability to download contact lists and send SMS messages on behalf of the victim, there is a high chance that the malicious actors are targeting connections of current victims with phishing links.” Read More

Robinhood discloses data breach impacting 7 million customers

Bleeping Computer, Lawrence Abrams
“At this time, we understand that the unauthorized party obtained a list of email addresses for approximately five million people, and full names for a different group of approximately two million people.” Read More

Mobile phishing exposure in the energy industry surged 161% in 2021

Helpnet Security
“As the energy industry modernizes and relies more heavily on mobile devices and cloud solutions, these insights into mobile phishing and app threats can help organizations strengthen their security program.” Read More

Cybersecurity News: November 8, 2021

Amazon Spoofed in New Attack

Infosecurity Magazine, Sarah Coble
“To incite the victims to make the call to Amazon, the attackers include high-price items on the fictitious emailed invoice.” Read More

Medical school exposes personal data of thousands of students

ZD Net, Charlie Osborne
“The server, which did not have authentication controls in place and was, therefore, accessible by anyone to view, contained 157GB of data, or just under an estimated 200,000 files.” Read More

FBI: Ransomware targets companies during mergers and acquisitions

Bleeping Computer, Sergiu Gatlan
“Impending events that could affect a victim’s stock value, such as announcements, mergers, and acquisitions, encourage ransomware actors to target a network or adjust their timeline for extortion where access is established.” Read More

Manufacturers forced to improve cyber security of wireless devices under new EU rule

IT Pro, Connor Jones
“To demonstrate compliance, manufacturers will have a choice of either submitting a self-assessment, or they can rely on a third-party assessment performed by an independent inspection body.” Read More

UMass Memorial notifies 209K patients 8 months after data breach discovery

SC Magazine, Jessica Davis
“The review determined the accounts contained a range of information from patient and health plan participants that included names, medical record numbers, health insurance details, clinical data, treatments, dates of birth, diagnoses, subscriber IDs, benefits election information, and procedures, among other data.” Read More

Cybersecurity News: November 1, 2021

Ransomware Soars 148% to Record-Breaking Levels in 2021

Infosecurity Magazine, Phil Muncaster
“As we see it, ransomware is on a nearly unimaginable upward trend, which poses a major risk to businesses, service providers, governments and everyday citizens.” Read More

Microsoft warns of new supply chain attacks by Russian-backed Nobelium group

Tech Republic, Lance Whitney
“The group’s likely goal is to obtain direct access that resellers have to the IT systems of their customers. If successful, Nobelium would then have a way to impersonate a technology provider and attack its downstream customers.” Read More

As fewer victims pay ransoms, Conti gang looks to sell victim data

SC Magazine, Joe Uchill
“In general, we’re just seeing fewer people pay. And so whenever that happens, the ransomware actors sort of try and launch new ventures as far as ‘how else can we coerce money out of people or monetize the data that was stolen.'” Read More

SolarWinds Attacker Targets Cloud Service Providers in New Supply Chain Threat

Dark Reading, Jai Vijayan
“We believe Nobelium ultimately hopes to piggyback on any direct access that resellers may have to their customers’ IT systems and more easily impersonate an organization’s trusted technology partner to gain access to their downstream customers.” Read More

Gigabyte struck by ransomware for the second time in three months

Silicon Angle, Duncan Riley
“In most double extortion schemes, the data theft focuses on quantity rather than quality. The file tree from this dump suggests that in this case, the threat actor focused on quality.” Read More

Cybersecurity News: October 25, 2021

Threat Actors Abusing Discord to Spread Malware

Infosecurity Magazine, Phil Muncaster
“As of now, any type of file, malicious or not, whose size is less than 8MB can be uploaded and sent via Discord. Because the file content isn’t analyzed, malware can be easily spread via Discord.” Read More

Sticky business: Ransomware hits U.S. candymaker ahead of Halloween

NBC News, Kevin Collier
“Ferrara…has been able to resume production only “in select manufacturing facilities. The spokesperson declined to say what percentage of orders it expected to fill before Halloween.” Read More

Telecommunications Providers Worldwide Are Targeted in Sophisticated Cyber-Espionage Campaign

Dark Reading, Jai Vijayan
“[LightBasin] is a pretty advanced actor. They have very bespoke tools that are meant to target the global telephony infrastructure and they are very good at what they do.” Read More

Acer hit with second cyberattack in less than a week, Taiwanese authorities notified

ZD Net, Jonathan Greig
“…Acer is way behind in its cybersecurity effects on protecting its data and is a global network of vulnerable servers.” Read More

US links $5.2 billion worth of Bitcoin transactions to ransomware

Bleeping Computer, Sergiu Gatlan
“The total value of ransomware-related [Suspicious Activity Reports] from the first six months of 2021, $590 million, already exceeds the $416 million reported for the entire year of 2020.” Read More