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:
- The UK’s new offensive cyber unit takes on organised crime and hostile states
November 19, 2020
A new offensive force made up of spies, cyber experts and the members of the military is already conducting cyber operations to disrupt hostile state activities, terrorists and criminals, the UK government has revealed. The new group – known as the National Cyber Force – aims to tackle threats to the UK’s national security such as ...
- Egregor Ransomware Attack Hijacks Printers to Spit Out Ransom Notes
November 19, 2020
So, you’re a ransomware gang and you want to ensure that you have caught the attention of your latest corporate victim. You could simply drop your ransom note onto the desktop of infected computers, informing the firm that their files have been encrypted. Too dull? You could lock infected PCs and display a ghoulish skull on a bright ...
- Advanced Threat predictions for 2021
November 19, 2020
Trying to make predictions about the future is a tricky business. However, while we don’t have a crystal ball that can reveal the future, we can try to make educated guesses using the trends that we have observed over the last 12 months to identify areas that attackers are likely to seek to exploit in ...
- Exploiting AI – How Cybercriminals Misuse and Abuse Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
November 19, 2020
Artificial intelligence (AI) is swiftly fueling the development of a more dynamic world. AI, a subfield of computer science that is interconnected with other disciplines, promises greater efficiency and higher levels of automation and autonomy. Simply put, it is a dual-use technology at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution. Together with machine learning (ML) ...
- Food-Supply Giant Americold Admits Cyberattack
November 19, 2020
Americold, a company whose cold-storage capabilities are integral to the U.S. food-supply chain (and soon, COVID-19 vaccine distribution), has confirmed an operations-impacting cyberattack, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The filing was brief and read in part: “As a precautionary measure, the company took immediate steps to help contain the incident ...
- CEOs Will Be Personally Liable for Cyber-Physical Security Incidents by 2024
November 17, 2020
Digital attack attempts in industrial environments are on the rise. In February 2020, IBM X-Force reported that it had observed a 2,000% increase in the attempts by threat actors to target Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) assets between 2018 and 2020. This surge eclipsed the total number of attacks against organizations’ industrial ...