Education and Academia


  • K-12 schools improve protection against online attacks, but many are vulnerable to ransomware gangs

    November 19, 2023

    Some K-12 public schools are racing to improve protection against the threat of online attacks, but lax cybersecurity means thousands of others are vulnerable to ransomware gangs that can steal confidential data and disrupt operations. Since a White House conference in August on ransomware threats, dozens of school districts have signed up for free cybersecurity services, ...

  • #StopRansomware: Rhysida Ransomware

    November 15, 2023

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the MultiState Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) are releasing this joint CSA to disseminate known Rhysida ransomware IOCs and TTPs identified through investigations as recently as September 2023. Rhysida – an emerging ransomware variant – has predominately been deployed against the education, ...

  • #StopRansomware: Royal Ransomware Update

    November 13, 2023

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are releasing this joint CSA to disseminate known Royal ransomware IOCs and TTPs identified through FBI threat response activities as recently as June 2023. Since approximately September 2022, cyber threat actors have compromised U.S. and international organizations with Royal ransomware. FBI and ...

  • Agonizing Serpens (Aka Agrius) Targeting the Israeli Higher Education and Tech Sectors

    November 6, 2023

    Unit 42 researchers have investigated a series of destructive cyberattacks beginning in January 2023 and continuing as recently as October 2023, targeting the education and technology sectors in Israel. The attacks are characterized by attempts to steal sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and intellectual property. Once the attackers stole the information, they ...

  • ‘iLeakage’ Attack Can Force Apple Safari To Reveal Passwords

    October 26, 2023

    A group of academic researchers has developed a speculative execution attack named “iLeakage” that can extract sensitive data, such as passwords and emails, on recent Apple devices via the Safari web browser. iLeakage has been developed by a team of academics from Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, and Ruhr University Bochum after extensive examination of ...

  • Sheffield Hallam cryptocurrency investigation game wins European Commission Award

    October 24, 2023

    A first-of-its kind cryptocurrency-tracing training game co-created by Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organised Crime Research (CENTRIC) has won a prestigious European Commission Award. Cryptopol was developed and co-created by researchers in CENTRIC and Europol, the law enforcement agency of the EU, in 2019. It simulates a cryptocurrency investigation ...

  • ‘Predator Files’ spyware scandal reveals brazen targeting of civil society, politicians and officials 

    October 9, 2023

    Shocking spyware attacks have been attempted against civil society, journalists, politicians and academics in the European Union (EU), USA and Asia, according to a major new investigation by Amnesty International. Among the targets of Predator spyware are United Nations (UN) officials, a Senator and Congressman in the USA and even the Presidents of the European ...

  • Czechia: University of Defence victim of cyber-attack

    September 27, 2023

    Czechia’s University of Defence was the victim of a cyber-attack, with hackers evidently stealing data from the institution’s rector, iRozhlas.cz reported on Wednesday. The news website said the Municipal State Prosecutor’s Office in Brno was looking into the matter. A spokesperson for the National Cyber and Information Security Agency said it would not comment on the ...

  • China’s Ministry of State Security reveals US’ infiltration of Huawei traced back to 2009

    September 20, 2023

    The US’ infiltration of Huawei headquarters’ servers can be traced back to 2009, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) said in an article released on Wednesday. The Chinese ministry disclosed despicable methods of cyber espionage adopted by US intelligence agencies, which include establishing cyberattack arsenals, coercing technology companies to cooperate, and distorting the truth to ...

  • China becomes main victim of advanced persistent threat attacks: Ministry of State Security

    September 16, 2023

    According to the Ministry of State Security on Saturday which is the 23rd National Defense Education Day, China has become the main victim of advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks, adding that cyberspace has become an important battleground for foreign intelligence agencies to conduct cyber espionage against China, Xinhua Daily Telegraph reported. The national security departments of ...

  • China: Identity of NSA hacker behind cyberattack on China’s leading aviation university identified

    September 14, 2023

    During the investigation of the cyberattack against Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), a leading Chinese aviation university, China has successfully extracted multiple samples of the spyware named SecondDate, and with the collaborative efforts of partners in various countries, the real identity of the US’ National Security Agency (NSA) personnel responsible for launching the cyberattack on NPU ...

  • Personal Data Leaked After Cyber Attack on Maryland Schools

    August 28, 2023

    Prince George’s County, Md., Public Schools officials said some of the personal data stolen in a recent cyber attack has leaked online. The Washington, D.C., area school system is one of the 20 largest school districts in the U.S., with 201 schools and centers. The school system discovered an attack on its network on Aug. 14, ...

  • Connecticut city loses $6 million in multiple cyber attacks on public school district, manages to recoup half

    August 11, 2023

    The city of New Haven lost more than $6 million in multiple cyberattacks on its public school district earlier this summer and has so far managed to recoup about half of the money, officials announced Thursday. The thefts, which occurred in June and involved hackers impersonating the city’s chief operating officer and private vendors in emails, ...

  • New cyberattack method: tracking typing remotely via keyboard sounds

    August 7, 2023

    A group of British cybersecurity researchers has figured out a novel new attack method: recording the sound a computer keyboard makes. The researcher took recordings using a nearby smartphone of typists and used it to train a sound classification model, achieving accuracies of 95% to suss out the actual keys pressed. They call this an acoustic side ...

  • UT Dallas joins national effort to respond to cyber attacks on public infrastructure

    August 1, 2023

    UT Dallas last week announced it’s joining a nationwide collaboration to research how to make network-connected infrastructure — including self-driving cars, drones and Wi-Fi-connected trains — more resilient to cyber attacks. The Richardson-based university joins eight others selected for the National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency, or TraCR, led by Clemson University in South Carolina. ...

  • A defense against attacks on unmanned ground and aerial vehicles

    July 21, 2023

    A University of Texas at Arlington engineering researcher is working on defenses that could thwart cyberattacks against networks of self-driving cars and unmanned aerial vehicles. “If hackers find a way to affect 10 out of 100 self-driving cars in a given area, they might have an impact on all 100 cars because the 10 hacked cars ...

  • Major cyber attack at Scottish university as police and government called in

    July 7, 2023

    The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) said it is working with experts from the national cyber security centre, Police Scotland and the Scottish Government after its website was shut down for several days. A message on the site displays a message warning it is “currently down” for maintenance and apologises for any inconvenience. Read more… Source: ...

  • New technique can defeat voice authentication “after only six tries”

    June 30, 2023

    Voice authentication is back in the news with another tale of how easy it might be to compromise. University of Waterloo scientists have discovered a technique which they claim can bypass voice authentication with “up to a 99% success rate after only six tries”. In fact this method is apparently so successful that it is said ...

  • UK: Hacking gang BlackCat says it stole data trove from the Barts Health NHS Trust

    June 30, 2023

    A gang of cybercriminals says it has breached one of the UK’s largest hospital groups and is threatening to publish a trove of its confidential data. The gang, known as ALPHV or BlackCat, posted a statement on Friday claiming it had obtained seven terabytes of internal documents from the Barts Health NHS Trust, which manages five ...

  • North Korea Using Social Engineering to Enable Hacking of Think Tanks, Academia, and Media

    June 1, 2023

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Department of State, and the National Security Agency (NSA), together with the Republic of Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), National Police Agency (NPA), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), are jointly issuing this advisory to highlight the use of social engineering by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ...