Cybercriminals breach Aflac as part of hacking spree against US insurance industry


Cybercriminals have breached insurance giant Aflac, potentially stealing Social Security numbers, insurance claims and health information, the company said Friday, the latest in a spree of hacks against the insurance industry.

With billions of dollars in annual revenue and tens of millions of customers, Aflac is the biggest victim yet in the ongoing digital assault on US insurance companies that has the industry on edge and the FBI and private cyber experts scrambling to contain the fallout. Erie Insurance and Philadelphia Insurance Companies have also reported hacks this month, which in those cases have caused widespread disruptions to IT systems used to serve customers. All three insurance-company hacks are consistent with the techniques of a young and rampant cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider, people familiar the investigation tell CNN.

Read more…
Source: CNN News


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • UK: Fake NHS text asks for bank details in return for coronavirus vaccine

    January 8, 2021

    People are being warned about a fake NHS text which is demanding bank details from people waiting for a coronavirus vaccine. Liverpool City Council said in a “scam alert” that the message had been “circulating”, advising people they were eligible for a COVID-19 jab. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) also tweeted a warning, reminding those waiting ...

  • Adversary Infrastructure Report 2020: A Defender’s View

    January 8, 2021

    Recorded Future tracks the creation and modification of new malicious infrastructure for a multitude of post-exploitation toolkits, custom malware frameworks, and open-source remote access trojans. The effort has been ongoing since 2017, when Insikt Group created methodologies to identify the deployments of open-source remote access trojans (RATs). Recorded Future collected over 10,000 unique command and control ...

  • TA551: Email Attack Campaign Switches from Valak to IcedID

    January 7, 2021

    TA551 (also known as Shathak) is an email-based malware distribution campaign that often targets English-speaking victims. The campaign discussed in this blog has targeted German, Italian and Japanese speakers. TA551 has historically pushed different families of information-stealing malware like Ursnif and Valak. After mid-July 2020, this campaign has exclusively pushed IcedID malware, another information stealer. This ...

  • FBI warns of Egregor ransomware extorting businesses worldwide

    January 7, 2021

    The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sent a security alert warning private sector companies that the Egregor ransomware operation is actively targeting and extorting businesses worldwide. The FBI says in a TLP:WHITE Private Industry Notification (PIN) shared on Wednesday that Egregor claims to have already hit and compromised more than over 150 victims since ...

  • Ryuk gang estimated to have made more than $150 million from ransomware attacks

    January 7, 2021

    The operators of the Ryuk ransomware are believed to have earned more than $150 million worth of Bitcoin from ransom payments following intrusions at companies all over the world. In a joint report published today, threat intel company Advanced Intelligence and cybersecurity firm HYAS said they tracked payments to 61 Bitcoin addresses previously attributed and linked ...

  • Expanding Range and Improving Speed: A RansomExx Approach

    January 6, 2021

    RansomExx, a ransomware variant responsible for several high-profile attacks in 2020, has shown signs of further development and unhampered activity. The most recently reported development involves the use of newer variants adapted for Linux servers that effectively expanded its range to more than Windows servers. Own monitoring efforts found RansomExx compromising companies in the United States, ...