( “ remove ” ) data from the server ; however , exfiltration could not be ruled out . Also , during the analysis of ABCD ’ s servers and computers , suspicious user accounts were discovered suggesting that hackers may have accessedAttack.Databreachportions of ABCD ’ s network . ABCD ’ s IT Company successfully removed the virus and all corrupt data from its servers . Secure backup data stored separately from ABCD ’ s servers and computers was not compromised by this incident , and it was used to restore all affected data . As a result , no confidential information was lost or destroyed , including protected health information . Also , please note that ABCD never received any ransom demandsAttack.Ransomor other communications from unknown persons . However , ABCD remains concerned because it discovered user logs indicating that computer programs or persons may have been on the server for a limited period of time . In addition to notifying its patients , ABCD notified the Federal Bureau of Investigations ( “ FBI ” ) , and it will notify the Department of Health and Human Services . While ABCD ’ s IT Company found no evidence that confidential information was actually acquired or removedAttack.Databreachfrom its servers and computers , it could not rule out the possibility that confidential information may have been viewedAttack.Databreachand possibly was acquiredAttack.Databreach. Importantly , ABCD can not confirm with a high degree of likelihood that confidential information remained secure throughout this incident . Generally , affected information may have included one ’ s name , address , telephone , date of birth , other demographic information , Social Security Number , insurance billing information , current procedural technology codes , medical records , and laboratory reports . ABCD takes its patient ’ s privacy and the security of their information very seriously . ABCD had a variety of security measures in place before this incident , including network filtering and security monitoring , intrusion detection systems , firewalls , antivirus software , and password protection . Following this incident , ABCD ’ s IT Company located the source of the intrusion and implemented several measures to ensure this kind of incident does not occur again , which include state of the art cyber monitoring on its network . ABCD and its IT Company continue to assess its physical and cyber security . We have arranged with Equifax Personal Solutions to help protect the identity and credit information of all patients . Patients can call 844-420-6493 Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time to determine whether they were affected . Also , if any patient has questions , they can call this same number to speak with a customer service representative about the incident . Patients also can place a fraud alert on their credit files with the three major credit reporting agencies . A fraud alert is a consumer statement added to one ’ s credit report . The fraud alert signals creditors to take additional steps to verify one ’ s identity prior to granting credit . This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in one ’ s name , though it may also delay one ’ s ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies identity . Fraud alerts are free and last 90 days unless you manually renew it or use the automatic fraud alert feature within a Credit Watch subscription . Patients also may want to order their credit report . By establishing a fraud alert , patients will receive a follow-up letter that will explain how they can receive a copy of their credit report . When patients receive their credit report , examine it closely and look for signs of fraud , such as credit accounts that are incorrect . Even though a fraud alert has been placed on their account , patients should continue to monitor future credit reports to ensure an imposter has not opened an account . If patients want to place a security freeze , they will need to call all three credit bureaus ( information listed above ) and place a security freeze on thier credit report . Charges to place and/or remove a security freeze vary by state and credit agency . We deeply regret any inconvenience this incident may have caused . If patients have questions , please call 844-420-6493 Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time .
One week ago a global cyberattackAttack.Ransomdubbed “ unprecedented ” by Europol began infecting an estimated 200,000 of the world ’ s computers , starting a seven-day countdown to the destruction of data if victims did not pay a ransomAttack.Ransom. On Friday , those countdowns begin reaching zero . But as of lunchtime the attackers had claimed only about $ 92,000 ( €82,183 ) in paymentsAttack.Ransomfrom their widespread ransom demandsAttack.Ransom, according to Elliptic Enterprises Ltd , a UK-based company that tracks illicit use of bitcoin . The company calculates the total based on payments tracked to bitcoin addresses specified in the ransom demandsAttack.Ransom. The ransomware , called WannaCry , began infecting users on May 12th and gave them 72 hours to payAttack.Ransom$ 300 in bitcoin or payAttack.Ransomtwice as much . Refusal to payAttack.Ransomafter seven days was promised to result in the permanent loss of data via irrevocable encryption . With affected institutions including the Health Service Executive ( which said it prevented the ransomware from activating ) , the National Health Service in the UK , FedEx and PetroChina , few initially paid upAttack.Ransom, leading to speculation that organisations were taking their chances on fixing their corrupt machines before the ransomAttack.Ransomforced a mass deletion of critical data . A week later , experts agree the financial gains of the hackers remain astonishingly low . “ With over 200,000 machines affected , the figure is lower than expected , ” said Jamie Akhtar , co-founder of the London-based security software firm CyberSmart . “ If even 1 per cent paid the ransomAttack.Ransomthat would be $ 600k. ” Mr Akhtar said experts may never know how much larger this figure would have been if a so-called kill switch had not been accidentally triggered by a cyber security researcher , who registered an internet domain that acted as a disabling tool for the worm ’ s propagation . While the world ’ s law enforcement is pointing its resources at trying to identify the culprits , Tom Robinson , chief operating officer and co-founder of Elliptic Enterprises , says it ’ s unlikely the money taken from victims will be taken from the digital bitcoin wallets they ’ re being anonymously held in . “ Given the amount of scrutiny this has come under , I would be surprised if they moved it anytime soon , ” he said . “ I just don ’ t think the risk is worth the $ 90,000 they ’ ve raised so far. ” Mr Akhtar agrees but doesn ’ t think the criminals have given up hope while machines infected later still have time ticking on their ransomAttack.Ransomcountdown . “ It seems like they are still actively trying to bring funds in , ” he said , noting a Twitter post from Symantec on Thursday , which seemed to show fresh messaging from the attackers promising to hold their end of the decryption bargain if victims paid upAttack.Ransom. Mr Akhtar believes the best thing the perpetrators can do to hide from authorities is “ destroy any evidence and abandon the bitcoin wallets ” . Of course , the hack may have nothing to do with money at all . Any movement of funds from a bitcoin wallet would act as a valuable clue for law enforcement as to who is behind the attack . Preliminary finger-pointing has already targeted groups with suspected links to the North Korean regime , but clues are still few are far between . – ( Bloomberg )
The White House has publicly blamed North Korea for a ransomware attackAttack.Ransomin May that locked more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries . `` North Korea has acted especially badly , largely unchecked , for more than a decade , '' Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert said at a White House briefing Tuesday morning . He called the WannaCry attackAttack.Ransoma reckless attack that caused `` havoc and destruction '' by locking vital information away from users , including hospital networks . `` We believe now we have the evidence to support this assertion , '' Bossert said . `` It 's very difficult to do when you 're looking for individual hackers . In this case , we found a concerted effort . '' In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday , Bossert wrote that after careful investigation , Washington can say that Pyongyang is `` directly responsible '' for the WannaCry virus . Bossert called the attackAttack.Ransomin which victims received ransom demandsAttack.Ransomto unlock their computers `` cowardly , costly and careless . '' `` The consequences and repercussions of WannaCry were beyond economic , '' he wrote . `` The malicious software hitAttack.Ransomcomputers in the U.K. 's health-care sector particularly hard , compromising systems that perform critical work . These disruptions put lives at risk . '' Bossert is expected to brief reporters on Tuesday about the hacking . NPR 's Elise Hu tells Morning Edition that `` cyberattacks are a way for North Korea to punch above its weight '' and that Pyongyang 's hackers `` have access to global networks and the Internet , and they have some real successes to count . '' Within days of the attack in May , North Korea fell under suspicion . As NPR 's Bill Chappell reported at the time , WannaCry was found to have `` lines of code that are identical to work by hackers known as the Lazarus Group , [ which has ] ... been linked to North Korea , raising suspicions that the nation could be responsible . '' And in October , Britain 's Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace said his government was `` as sure as possible '' that Pyongyang launched the attack . Bossert said in the Journal that President Trump had `` ordered the modernization of government information-technology to enhance the security of the systems we run on behalf of the American people . '' `` We also indicted Russian hackers and a Canadian acting in concert with them . A few weeks ago , we charged three Chinese nationals for hackingAttack.Databreach, theftAttack.Databreachof trade secrets and identity theft . There will almost certainly be more indictments to come , '' he wrote . He said that the administration would continue to use its `` maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang 's ability to mount attacks , cyber or otherwise . ''
A Tor proxy service is being used by crooks to divert ransom paymentsAttack.Ransomto their own accounts at the expense of ransomware distributors -- and their victims , according to security researchers . Ransomware distributors expecting an easy payday are having their illicit earnings stolen by other cybercriminals , who are hijacking the ransom paymentsAttack.Ransombefore they 're received and redirecting them into their own bitcoin wallets . But not only are the attacks giving criminals a taste of their own medicine in becoming victims of cyber-theft , they are also preventing ransomware victims from unlocking their encrypted files -- because , as far as those distributing the malware are concerned , they never received their ransom paymentAttack.Ransom. Uncovered by researchers at Proofpoint , it 's believed to be the first scheme of its kind , with cybercriminals using a Tor proxy browser to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks to steal the cryptocurrency payments , which victims of ransomware are attempting to sendAttack.Ransomto their attackers . The attacks take advantage of the way ransomware distributors requestAttack.Ransomvictims to use Tor to buy the cryptocurrency they need to make the ransom paymentAttack.Ransom. While many ransomware notes provide instructions on how to download and run the Tor browser , others provide links to a Tor proxy -- regular websites that translate Tor traffic into normal web traffic -- so the process of payingAttack.Ransomis as simple as possible for the victim . However , one of the Tor gateways being used is altering bitcoin wallet addresses in the proxy , and redirecting the paymentAttack.Ransominto other accounts , rather than those of the ransomware attacker . Meanwhile , those behind Magniber ransomware appear to have moved to combat bitcoin address replacement by splitting the HTML source code of wallets into four parts , thus making it harder for proxies to find the address to change . While the sums of bitcoin stolen do n't represent a spectacular haul , the interception attacks do create problems for ransomware distributors -- and their victims . The victims are the ultimate losers in this scenario . Not only are they payingAttack.Ransomhundreds or even thousands of dollars to in ransom demandsAttack.Ransom, they 're not even getting their files back in return because the man-in-the-middle attacks mean the ransomware distributors do n't think they 've been paidAttack.Ransom.
Cryptojacking attacks exploded by 8,500 % in 2017 resulting from the sudden increase in cryptocurrency values . According to research released by Symantec , UK ranked as the fifth highest country worldwide , with a staggering 44,000 % increase in coin-miner detections . With a low barrier to entry – only requiring a couple lines of code to operate – cyber-criminals are harnessing stolen processing power and cloud CPU usage from consumers and enterprises to mine cryptocurrency . Coin-miners can slow devices , overheat batteries , and in some cases , render devices unusable . For enterprise organizations , coin-miners can put corporate networks at risk of shutdown and inflate cloud CPU usage , adding cost . Symantec also found a 600 % increase in overall IoT attacks in 2017 , which means that cyber-criminals could exploit the connected nature of these devices to mine en masse . “ Attackers could be co-opting your phone , computer or IoT device to use them for profit , ” said Darren Thomson , CTO and VP EMEA , Symantec . “ People need to expand their defences or they will pay the price for someone else using their device. ” The Annual Threat Report also showed that while ransomware was still being used in 2017 , there were fewer ransomware families and lower ransom demandsAttack.Ransom. Symantec outlined in its report that “ many cyber-criminals may have shifted their focus to coin mining as an alternative to cash in while cryptocurrency values are high ” and that “ some online banking threats have also experienced a renaissance as established ransomware groups have attempted to diversify. ” Last year , the average ransom demandAttack.Ransomdropped to $ 522 , less than half the average of the year prior . While the number of ransomware variants increased by 46 % , indicating the established criminal groups are still quite productive , the number of ransomware families dropped , suggesting they are innovating less and may have shifted their focus to new , higher value targets . The report analyzed data from the Symantec Global Intelligence Network , which tracks over 700,000 global adversaries , records events from 98 million attack sensors worldwide and monitors threat activities in over 157 countries and territories . Threats in the mobile space continued to grow year-over-year , including the number of new mobile malware variants which increased by 54 % . According to the report , Symantec blocked an average of 24,000 malicious mobile applications each day last year , citing older operating systems as one of the main causes - only 20 % of devices are running the newest version of Android . Mobile users also face privacy risks from 'grayware ' apps that aren ’ t completely malicious but can be troublesome - Symantec found that 63 % of grayware apps leak the device ’ s phone number . Unfortunately , with grayware increasing by 20 % in 2017 , Symantec do not believe this problem will be going away .
Nearly a week after it became the target of one of the largest ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomto date , the City of Atlanta has made progress toward recovery , but it is still far from business as usual . Hackers encrypted many of the city government 's vital data and computer systems . The ransomware attackAttack.Ransom, which Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms characterized as `` a hostage situation , '' forced the city to shut down municipal courts and even prevented residents from paying bills online . The city has been unable to issue warrants , and in many cases city employees have had to fill out forms and reports by hand . The hackers demandedAttack.Ransomthat officials pay a ransomAttack.Ransomof US $ 51,000 to be sent to a bitcoin wallet . Threat researchers from Dell-owned Secureworks , which is based in Atlanta , have been working to help the city recover from the attack . The security firm identified the assailants as the SamSam hacking group , The New York Times reported on Thursday . That organization has been known for similar ransomware attacksAttack.Ransom; it typically makes ransom demandsAttack.Ransomof $ 50,000 or more , usually payable only with bitcoin . Secureworks has been working with the city 's incident response team as well as the FBI , the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service . In addition , a number of independent experts , including researchers from Georgia Tech , have been called in to determine how the attack occurred and help strategize to prevent another such attack . As of Thursday , the city 's Department of Information Management , which first discovered the attack on March 21 , said that it had found no evidence that customer or employee data was compromisedAttack.Databreach. It nevertheless encouraged everyone to take precautionary measures , including the monitoring of personal accounts and protecting personal information .
LabCorp , one of the largest clinical labs in the U.S. , said the Samsam ransomware attackAttack.Ransomthat forced their systems offline was contained quickly and did n't result in a data breachAttack.Databreach. However , in the brief time between detection and mitigation , the ransomware was able to encrypt thousands of systems and several hundred production servers . The wider public first learned about the LabCorp incident on Monday , when the company disclosed it via an 8-K filing with the SEC . Since then , as recovery efforts continue , the company said they 're at about 90-percent operational capacity . According to sources familiar with the investigation , the Samsam attackAttack.Ransomat LabCorp started at midnight on July 13 . This is when the Samsam group used brute force against RDP and deployed ransomware by the same name to the LabCorp network . At 6:00 p.m. on Saturday , July 14 , the first computer was encrypted . The LabCorp SOC ( Security Operation Center ) immediately took action after that first system was encrypted , alerting IR teams and severing various links and connections . These quick actions ultimately helped the company contain the spread of the infection and neutralize the attack within 50 minutes . However , before the attack was fully contained , 7,000 systems and 1,900 servers were impacted . Of those 1,900 servers , 350 were production servers . The analysis and recovery continued at that point . This led the company to confirm the source of the attack as a brute forced RDP instance , and confirm that only Windows systems were impacted . According to NetFlow management and traffic monitoring , nothing left the network during the attack , so the company is confident that there was no data breachAttack.Databreach. Given the RDP connection to this attack , and the fact that most attacks of this nature are bi-directional , LabCorp will likely implement two-factor authentication in the future . It is n't clear if the company has a timeline for these changes , or if two-factor authentication was already in place at the time of the attack . Salted Hash has reached out to LabCorp for additional comment and will update should they respond . However , because LabCorp was able to detect and respond to the attack quickly , they likely saved themselves from costly and lengthy outages . It 's also likely that backups ( tested and current ) played a large role in the recovery phase of the incident . The last time the Samsam group was in the news , they had attacked the Colorado Department of Transportation twice in two weeks and the City of Atlanta . In March , based on the current value of Bitcoin at the time , it was estimated that the group had earned nearly $ 850,000 USD from their victims , who paid the ransom demandsAttack.Ransom.
A GandCrab ransomware attackAttack.Ransom, combined with a Comcast outage , caused a Florida Keys school district ’ s computer system to be down for a week . The computer system in a Florida Keys school district were down for a week due to a ransomware attackAttack.Ransom. The problems were made worse when just as the district was bringing up some administration and school computers , Comcast suffered a day-long outage due to a cut fiber . Monroe County School District was the victim of a GandCrab ransomware attackAttack.Ransom. GandCrab , first spotted in January , was dubbed the leading ransomware threat in July . A school district employee working on payroll discovered undisclosed problems on Sunday , Sept 9 , and submitted an IT ticket . IT contacted Symantec and was advised to bring it all down and secure the system . Pat Lefere , executive director of operations and planning for the district , told the Miami Herald , “ This particular one was a variant that Symantec hadn ’ t seen before . They took all of our files and created a patch for us . It was applied to all servers before bringing them back up. ” Symantec shows the latest detected GandCrab ransomware discovered on Wednesday , Sept 12 , but it may not be the variant that hit the Florida school district , as the IT department thought it had fixed the problem on Tuesday morning . Yet upon bringing the system back up , they saw the same issues as when the ransomware was discovered on Sunday and shut the system down again . “ We haven ’ t had any access to data that was inappropriate nor have we had lost data , ” district superintendent Mark Porter later told the Miami Herald . “ The bad news is we haven ’ t had the type of access our employees are used to. ” The cyber attack did not affect payroll , but it did affect delivery of students ’ mid-quarter progress reports . Monroe County School District claimed there were no ransom demandsAttack.Ransom, but since ransomware locks up a system and demands paymentAttack.Ransomto retrieve a decryption key for encrypted files , perhaps the district meant it didn ’ t cave to extortion ? Lefere said , “ That only happens for folks that don ’ t back up their stuff and are so desperate . We recover our files from the last backup. ” The district ’ s website was back up by Wednesday , but the computer systems remained partially down on Thursday . Lefere said the district rebuilt “ each server from scratch to make sure they ’ re clean . ”
Cyberthieves are increasingly targeting the malicious software , which locks all files on a targeted computer or network until the owner pays upAttack.Ransom, at smaller and arguably more vulnerable organizations . The Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County in California was a recent target . Seconds after a co-worker clicked on a malicious email attachment , “ the compressed file she had opened connected her computer with a server in the Ukraine , ” says Will Bailey , director of IT for the organization . “ It downloaded the ransomware code and began to encrypt files on her device ” . While cyberthieves ostensibly have more to gain from large organizations , experts say they see smaller organizations as lower-hanging fruit . Because a successful breach of an institution with fewer information security resources is easier to achieve and more likely to have a meaningful impact , it is also more likely to result in a payment . “ Small businesses are frequently a more appealing target for ransomware because they sit at the juncture of money and vulnerability , ” says Ryan Olson , director of the Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 cybersecurity threat intelligence team . “ They frequently have more money than individuals , but being small businesses , they lack the more sophisticated defenses that larger business have ” . “ These attackers have also learned that the most profitable method is to hitAttack.Ransommany small businesses with low ransom demandsAttack.Ransom—usually $ 300 to $ 2,000 . Even small businesses can generally afford to pay those amounts ” . — Eric Hodge , director of consulting , IDT911 Consulting The stats are staggering . The frequency of ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomagainst organizations with fewer than 200 employees is poised to “ triple or quadruple ” from that of 2015 , according to Eric Hodge , director of consulting for IDT911 Consulting . And 60 percent of small businesses that suffer a ransomware attackAttack.Ransomare already going out of business within six months , according to the U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance . For many small businesses , if the ransomAttack.Ransomis low enough , and data backups aren ’ t available , experts say the most cost-effective response is often to pay the ransomAttack.Ransom. “ At this point , it seems to be the small companies , and individuals providing service as a company , who are in the crosshairs , ” Hodge says . “ These attackers have also learned that the most profitable method is to hitAttack.Ransommany small businesses with low ransom demandsAttack.Ransom—usually $ 300 to $ 2,000 . Even small businesses can generally afford to pay those amounts ” . Ransomware reportedly has cost U.S. small to midsize businesses alone more than $ 75 billion in damages and payments , according to a September 2016 survey by data protection vendor Datto . Indeed , 31 percent of the Datto survey ’ s respondents said they had experienced multiple ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomwithin a single day , and a whopping 63 percent said these attacks led to downtime in their business operations , which could cost them as much as $ 8,500 per hour . And according to Symantec ’ s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report , 43 percent of last year ’ s phishing emails , the vast majority of which were laced with ransomware , targeted small businesses—up from 18 percent in 2011 . New research indicates that consumers similarly are becoming more attractive ransomware targets . According to a recent study from IBM X-Force , which surveyed 600 business professionals and 1,000 consumers , 54 percent of consumers said they would pay a ransomAttack.Ransomto retrieve their financial data , and 55 percent of parents said they would payAttack.Ransomto have digital photos returned . With cybercriminals constantly upping their game in ransomware , small businesses and consumers have little choice but to remain vigilant and take “ simple steps ” to mitigate the risk of an attack , Palo Alto Networks ’ Olson says . In addition to keeping systems up-to-date with security updates , and taking precautions before opening attachments or clicking on links , he recommends maintaining offline backups—or cloud-based backups outside your network—to recover potentially compromised files .
Cyberthieves are increasingly targeting the malicious software , which locks all files on a targeted computer or network until the owner pays upAttack.Ransom, at smaller and arguably more vulnerable organizations . The Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County in California was a recent target . Seconds after a co-worker clicked on a malicious email attachment , “ the compressed file she had opened connected her computer with a server in the Ukraine , ” says Will Bailey , director of IT for the organization . “ It downloaded the ransomware code and began to encrypt files on her device ” . While cyberthieves ostensibly have more to gain from large organizations , experts say they see smaller organizations as lower-hanging fruit . Because a successful breach of an institution with fewer information security resources is easier to achieve and more likely to have a meaningful impact , it is also more likely to result in a payment . “ Small businesses are frequently a more appealing target for ransomware because they sit at the juncture of money and vulnerability , ” says Ryan Olson , director of the Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 cybersecurity threat intelligence team . “ They frequently have more money than individuals , but being small businesses , they lack the more sophisticated defenses that larger business have ” . “ These attackers have also learned that the most profitable method is to hitAttack.Ransommany small businesses with low ransom demandsAttack.Ransom—usually $ 300 to $ 2,000 . Even small businesses can generally afford to pay those amounts ” . — Eric Hodge , director of consulting , IDT911 Consulting The stats are staggering . The frequency of ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomagainst organizations with fewer than 200 employees is poised to “ triple or quadruple ” from that of 2015 , according to Eric Hodge , director of consulting for IDT911 Consulting . And 60 percent of small businesses that suffer a ransomware attackAttack.Ransomare already going out of business within six months , according to the U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance . For many small businesses , if the ransomAttack.Ransomis low enough , and data backups aren ’ t available , experts say the most cost-effective response is often to pay the ransomAttack.Ransom. “ At this point , it seems to be the small companies , and individuals providing service as a company , who are in the crosshairs , ” Hodge says . “ These attackers have also learned that the most profitable method is to hitAttack.Ransommany small businesses with low ransom demandsAttack.Ransom—usually $ 300 to $ 2,000 . Even small businesses can generally afford to pay those amounts ” . Ransomware reportedly has cost U.S. small to midsize businesses alone more than $ 75 billion in damages and payments , according to a September 2016 survey by data protection vendor Datto . Indeed , 31 percent of the Datto survey ’ s respondents said they had experienced multiple ransomware attacksAttack.Ransomwithin a single day , and a whopping 63 percent said these attacks led to downtime in their business operations , which could cost them as much as $ 8,500 per hour . And according to Symantec ’ s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report , 43 percent of last year ’ s phishing emails , the vast majority of which were laced with ransomware , targeted small businesses—up from 18 percent in 2011 . New research indicates that consumers similarly are becoming more attractive ransomware targets . According to a recent study from IBM X-Force , which surveyed 600 business professionals and 1,000 consumers , 54 percent of consumers said they would pay a ransomAttack.Ransomto retrieve their financial data , and 55 percent of parents said they would payAttack.Ransomto have digital photos returned . With cybercriminals constantly upping their game in ransomware , small businesses and consumers have little choice but to remain vigilant and take “ simple steps ” to mitigate the risk of an attack , Palo Alto Networks ’ Olson says . In addition to keeping systems up-to-date with security updates , and taking precautions before opening attachments or clicking on links , he recommends maintaining offline backups—or cloud-based backups outside your network—to recover potentially compromised files .
A hacker ( or hacker group ) known as The Dark Overlord ( TDO ) has leakedAttack.Databreachthe first ten episodes of season 5 of the `` Orange Is The New Black '' show after two failed blackmailAttack.Ransomattempts , against Larson Studios and Netflix . TDO is one of the most well-known figures in today 's dwindling hacker landscape . He first appeared on the scene in late 2015 and made a name for himself by hackingAttack.Databreachhealthcare organizations , stealingAttack.Databreachtheir data , and trying to extract ransomsAttack.Ransomfrom victims by threatening to release sensitive data to the public . The hacker 's online presence shrunk in the past few months , as many hoped he called it quits and moved on to other activities . Last night , at around 22:00 UTC ( 17:00 ET ) , your reporter noticed the hacker posting links on his Twitter profile that linked to a Pastebin page , GitHub profile , and a Pirate Bay torrent sharing episode 1 of season 5 of Netflix 's `` Orange Is The New Black '' show . We did n't manage to get ahold of the Pastebin and GitHub links because they went down 20 minutes after they were posted , but we presume the links contained ransom demandsAttack.Ransom. On the other hand , the Pirate Bay torrent file remained online , and users have downloaded and shared its content . Twelve hours later , TDO posted a new set of links on Twitter . These included a statement posted on Pastebin and a second torrent file , also hosted on The Pirate Bay , containing episodes 2 through 10 of the same season 5 of `` Orange Is The New Black . '' In the Pastebin statement , TDO says he released the ten `` Orange Is The New Black '' episodes because Netflix did n't want to pay a ransom demandAttack.Ransom. While we were n't able to get in touch with TDO after numerous attempts , the hacker spoke with the administrator of DataBreaches.net , a reporter named Dissent . In their interview , TDO revealed he discovered `` hundreds of GBs of unreleased and non-public media , '' on the servers of a Hollywood studio . The hacker did n't clarify if the server was exposed accidentally , or if he hacked it . DataBreaches.net identified the studio as Larson Studios , Inc. , an audio post-production company , who later confirmed TDO's extortionAttack.Ransomattempt via email . TDO claims the studio initially agreed to pay a ransomAttack.Ransomof 50 Bitcoin ( $ 67,000 ) by January 31 , and the two parties even signed a contract , albeit TDO signed it using the name `` Adolf Hitler . '' Something happened during the month of January , and the studio did not honor its word . At this point , the hacker turned from the studio to Netflix . According to TDO 's statement , Netflix did n't want to pay his ransom demandAttack.Ransomeither , and after two months he was forced to release the first ten episodes of season 5 of `` Orange Is The New Black . '' According to Netflix 's website , season 5 is supposed to have 13 episodes and is scheduled for release in June , this year . The release of these episodes is TDO 's shot across the bow . The hacker claims to hold other unreleased shows and movies from several other studios .
Files claiming to be the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie have leakedAttack.Databreachonline after Disney refused to meet hackers ' demandsAttack.Ransom. On 17 May , Softpedia 's Gabriela Vatu reported that two copies of Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Men Tell No Tales had appeared on the popular ( and somewhat appropriate ) BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay . `` According to the information unearthed thus far , the hackers managed to get accessAttack.Databreachto the systems of Larson Studios in Hollywood , a company that handles additional dialogue recorded for movies . It seems that the copies they 've managed to get their hands on are in various stages of production and not exactly what you 'd expect from a full cinema-ready release . '' News of the extortion attempt first appeared in The Hollywood Reporter on 15 May when Bob Iger , CEO at Walt Disney , revealed the hackers had demandedAttack.Ransomthat Disney payAttack.Ransoma `` huge sum '' in Bitcoins to prevent them from leaking a then-undisclosed movie online . At the time , the attackers said they would release the film incrementally to netizens , first publishing clips lasting only a few minutes and slowly building up to 20-minute segments . Iger said Disney decided to not payAttack.Ransomthe attackers and was working with federal law enforcement to investigate the theft of one of its productions . It 's unclear who exactly perpetrated the leakAttack.Databreach- if indeed the files really are of the movie . Even so , a potential candidate is The Dark Overlord , a group of hackers who released the fifth season of Orange Is the New Black after Netflix refused to meet its ransom demandsAttack.Ransomback in April 2017 . Around that time , the hacking gang , which has also extortedAttack.Ransomnon-film entities in the past , tweeted out that it had stolenAttack.Databreachcontent from a number of other media companies . It did not name Walt Disney by name , though it did point to FOX , ABC , and others . Who is next on the list ? FOX , IFC , NAT GEO , and ABC . Oh , what fun we 're all going to have . We 're not playing any games anymore . While Disney and Netflix continue to work with the FBI in tracking down The Dark Overlord , someone has already removed the two copies of what claimed to be the Pirates of the Caribbean film from The Pirate Bay . The hackers could release the movies again . Or they might be focusing on their next target . While movie-goers might celebrate a leak of the movie , media companies like Walt Disney do n't want viewers gaining early access to their content . That 's why organizations should take the opportunity to conduct some security awareness training with their employees . This effort should include phishingAttack.Phishingsimulations and reviewing the security readiness of companies along their supply chains . Article updated 19 May 2017 . None of the files made available as downloadable torrents have been confirmed to contain footage of the movie . For more discussion on the issue , make sure to listen to this recent episode of the `` Smashing Security '' podcast . Your browser does not support this audio element .
A new ransomware-as-a-service ( RaaS ) has reportedly emerged , offering cybercriminals on the dark web the option of using ransomware created by someone else in exchange for subscription payments . According to a report by ZDNet , independent security researcher going by the Twitter handle Xylitol uncovered the Satan malware as part of the Gen : Trojan.Heur2.FU malware family . Satan now however has been launched as part of a RaaS platform , which allows prospective cybercriminals access to ransomware in exchange for 30 % of the revenues generated . Once a victim has been infected with Satan via either malicious links or phishing campaignsAttack.Phishing, the victim 's files are encrypted and the attackers instructAttack.Ransomthe victims about ransom demandsAttack.Ransom. Satan reportedly contains a HTML file that claims that restoring the encrypted files are impossible . According to researchers , this claim is not unfounded , indicating that the only way victims can regain access to their stolen files is by paying up the demanded ransomAttack.Ransom. Satan 's ransom note instructsAttack.Ransomvictims to install the Tor browser and then redirected to an .onion link to make the ransom payments . The ransom amount varies according to the specification of the cybercriminals using the RaaS platform . Those interested in the RaaS ' services must connect a Bitcoin wallet to their account and point out a cost for decryption . Satan RaaS comes with several features , including fee payment records , transaction tracking , ransomware version releases and more . The platform provides hackers with tips on how to customise ransomware demands . Satan also helps hackers learn how to set up gateway proxies , and how to test their malware on systems . The platform also provides hackers with the option of translating their malware into different languages .
Over a dozen Democratic groups were approached with ransom demandsAttack.Ransomby Russian hackers over protester funding information , according to a Monday report from Bloomberg . The liberal Center for American Progress was one of the groups that was approached by what FBI officials report is the same group behind the Democratic National Committee hacks committed last year . Many of the Trump protesters during the runup to the November election and after were not spontaneous citizens airing their grievances but were paid professionals . Maybe that ’ s why so many of them wore masks , KKK style . But the protesters weren ’ t the only ones who got paid…others who threatened to disclose these facts got paid $ 30,000 or up , to as much as $ 150,000 for their silence . By Democrat groups who funded the protests , of course . Or by paying the “ransom”Attack.Ransomdid the Democrats actually secure the release of some child kidnapped by the Russians ? You pay ransomAttack.Ransomto have somebody or something released