Displaying items by tag: Emsisoft

Claims that a leak of the user data of 533 million Facebook users has just taken place is a bit of a stretch. A major part of this data has been out on the Web for a long time.

In a strictly legal sense, Nine Entertainment is correct in continuing to push the notion that it has not received a ransom note after it announced on 28 March that it had fallen victim to what was described as a "cyber attack", a senior security researcher has told iTWire.

Incident response firm Coveware has deleted a small portion of an article it had posted online in 2019, after the actors behind the REvil ransomware group — also known as Sodinokibi — used it to promote the efficiency of their own decryptor over that of the one used by rival ransomware actor, Ryuk.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol tool was the attack vector of choice for ransomware attackers in 2020 as they stepped up as the pandemic created an environment suitable for this malware genre to thrive.

Security firm Qualys has become the latest to be affected by a breach of a file transfer system manufactured by the firm Accellion, the company says.

Law enforcement authorities in France and Ukraine have joined forces to arrest a number of people in Ukraine who were using the Windows Egregor ransomware to make money.

Polish video game developer CD Projekt, a company that is known for its game series The Witcher and the CyberPunk 2077 project, says it has suffered an attack from unspecified ransomware, but claims that users' personal data has not been affected.

Ransomware continued on its merry ways in the US public sector in 2020, with 2354 attacks on government, healthcare facilities and schools. The attacks have been only on systems running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

One of the many tools used by multiple ransomware groups in a similar way — suggesting that they are being used by ransomware-as-a-service affiliates — is the Windows backdoor SystemBC, global cyber security vendor Sophos claims.

Two banks in India have been reported to be among the latest businesses to suffer from Windows ransomware attacks, with Nav Jeevan Co-operative Bank taking a hit from the Egregor ransomware while the IDFC First Bank was attacked by a gang using the Everest ransomware. But the latter has now denied it was affected.

Ransomware gangs have shown themselves to be an innovative lot, incorporating more and more tactics as they look to extort money from their victims and this trend will continue into the new year, a veteran researcher of this brand of malware says.

The cyber criminals behind the ransomware attack on Italian liqueur manufacturer Campari Group have taken their efforts to publicise the intrusion in a different direction, infiltrating the Facebook page of an entertainment event organiser and posting an ad and news about the attack there.

Ransomware attacks have grown massively in number over the last 12 months and these days most attacks on Windows systems are invariably through the use of this genre of malware.

A total of 809 ransomware attacks have taken place in the last 12 months, according to DarkTracer, a company that develops a dark web intelligence platform.

Ransomware gangs appear to have added another tool to their arsenal in order to extort ransoms from their victims, with some using distributed denial of service attacks to pile on the pressure.

American cloud software firm Blackbaud has back-flipped on a statement it made after a ransomware attack, saying on Wednesday that the attackers had actually managed to gain access to customer data.

With the US presidential elections just 35 days away, mentions of Russia in the American mainstream media have, expectedly, reached a feverish pitch, with every Tom, Dick and Harry — not to mention every Sarah, Holly and Nicole — raising the alarm about the possibility of forces from Moscow poking their noses into the election.

A security firm that is deeply involved in the business of combating ransomware has called for a government ban on the payment of ransoms by companies that fall prey to this form of Windows malware, adding that there was no other practical solution to the problem.

The ransomware used in an attack on Duesseldorf University Clinic last week, which led to the death of a woman, appears to be Maze, security sources have told iTWire.

Japanese multinational optical and imaging products vendor Canon appears to have become the victim of an attack by a gang using the Windows Maze ransomware.