- Baltimore County Public Schools hit by ransomware attack
November 25, 2020
Baltimore County Public Schools has been hit today by a ransomware attack that led to a systemic shutdown of its network due to the number of systems impacted in the attack. The Baltimore County school district manages all public schools in Baltimore County, Maryland, and is the 25th largest U.S. school system. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer
- When Threat Actors Fly Under the Radar: Vatet, PyXie and Defray777
November 6, 2020
As security practitioners, Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers spend a lot of time focusing on the threat actors and malware families that leverage the most impactful exploits or affect the highest number of victims. But what happens when a threat actor goes “low and slow” to fly under the radar? One could argue that, in ...
- Massachusetts school district shut down by ransomware attack
October 8, 2020
The Springfield Public Schools district in Massachusetts has become the victim of a ransomware attack that has caused the closure of schools while they investigate the cyberattack. Springfield is the third largest school district in Massachusetts with over 25,000 students, 4,500 employees, and more than sixty schools. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district opened ...
- Alert issued to UK universities and colleges about spike in cyber attacks
September 17, 2020
British universities and colleges have been warned about a spike in ransomware attacks targeting the education sector by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ. Academic institutions are being urged to follow NCSC guidance following a sharp increase in attacks which have left some teachers fearing they won’t be able to accept ...
- Surge in DDoS attacks targeting education and academic sector
September 15, 2020
As education institutions across the world moved to online learning, cyber threat disruptions have amplified more than ever. Malware, vulnerability exploits, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), phishing attacks have all struck this sector, increasing in frequency over the past two months. As schools in the U.S. restarted in remote learning mode, cybersecurity companies noticed a surge in DDoS ...
- Fairfax County schools hit by Maze ransomware, student data leaked
September 12, 2020
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the 10th largest school division in the US, was recently hit by ransomware according to an official statement published on Friday evening. The school district is also the largest in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and it has a budget of $3.1 billion approved for 2021. FCPS has over 188,000 current students and ...
- City of Hartford postpones first day of school after ransomware attack
September 8, 2020
Officials from the city of Hartford, Connecticut, were forced to postpone the first day of the new school calendar year after a ransomware infection impacted the city’s IT network. According to a statement published by Hartford Public Schools, the school district serving the city of Hartford, the ransomware attack impacted several of the school’s internal IT ...
- Newcastle University students’ data held to ransom by cyber criminals
September 8, 2020
Newcastle University is being held to ransom by cyber criminals in an attack which has been disrupting IT systems since the beginning of the month. The cyber crime group behind the attack – known as DoppelPaymer – previously leaked documents online relating to Elon Musk’s companies SpaceX and Tesla. The criminals have posted stolen files from the ...
- Digital Education: The cyberrisks of the online classroom
September 4, 2020
This past spring, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, online learning became the new norm as universities and classrooms around the world were forced to close their doors. By April 29, 2020, more than 1.2 billion children across 186 countries were impacted by school closures. Shortly after schools began to transition to emergency remote learning, it ...
- DarkSide: New targeted ransomware demands million dollar ransoms
August 21, 2020
A new ransomware operation named DarkSide began attacking organizations earlier this month with customized attacks that have already earned them million-dollar payouts. Starting around August 10th, 2020, the new ransomware operation began performing targeted attacks against numerous companies. In a “press release” issued by the threat actors, they claim to be former affiliates who had made millions ...
- New FritzFrog P2P botnet has breached at least 500 enterprise, government servers
August 19, 2020
A P2P botnet newly-discovered by researchers has struck at least 500 government and enterprise SSH servers over 2020. On Wednesday, cybersecurity firm Guardicore Labs published research into FritzFrog, a peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet that has been detected by the company’s sensors since January this year. According to researcher Ophir Harpaz, FritzFrog has attempted to brute-force SSH servers belonging ...
- Using Botnets to Manipulate Energy Markets for Big Profits
August 6, 2020
Researchers are warning that a new class of botnets could be marshaled and used to manipulate energy markets via zombie armies of power-hungry connected devices such as air conditioners, heaters, dryers and digital thermostats. A coordinated attack could cause an energy stock index to predictably go up or down – creating an opportunity for a ...
- ‘Lamphone’ Hack Uses Lightbulb Vibrations to Eavesdrop on Homes
June 15, 2020
Researchers have discovered a novel way to spy on conversations that are happening in houses from almost a hundred feet away. The hack stems simply from a lightbulb hanging in the home. The hack, dubbed “lamphone,” is performed by analyzing the tiny vibrations of a hanging lightbulb, which are caused by nearby sounds. All an attacker ...
- NCA launches UK ad campaign to divert kids searching for cybercrime tools
May 29, 2020
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has launched a new advertising campaign designed to divert young people searching for cybercrime services to white hat alternatives. As spotted by cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs, using a UK IP address when searching Google for particular terms that can relate to cybercrime, such as Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) for hire, booters, stressers, ...
- Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app
April 29, 2020
A group of nearly 175 UK academics has criticised the NHS’s planned COVID-19 contact-tracing app for a design choice they say could endanger users by creating a centralised store of sensitive health and travel data about them. In the open letter published this afternoon, the 173 scholars called on NHSX, the state-run health service’s app-developing and ...
- Academics steal data from air-gapped systems using PC fan vibrations
April 17, 2020
Academics from an Israeli university have proven the feasibility of using fans installed inside a computer to create controlled vibrations that can be used to steal data from air-gapped systems. The technique, codenamed AiR-ViBeR, is the latest in a long list of wacky data exfiltration techniques devised by Mordechai Guri, the head of R&D at the ...
- Bluetooth LE devices impacted by SweynTooth vulnerabilities
February 15, 2020
A team of academics from Singapore has published this week a research paper detailing a collection of vulnerabilities named SweynTooth that impact devices running the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol. More specifically, the SweynTooth vulnerabilities impact the software development kits (SDKs) responsible for supporting BLE communications. Read more… Source: ZDNet
- Researchers Use Smart Light Bulbs to Infiltrate Networks
February 6, 2020
Researchers successfully infiltrated networks through a vulnerability in Philips Hue light bulbs. The CVE-2020-6007 vulnerability, which involves the ZigBee communication protocol, can be abused to remotely install malicious firmware in smart light bulbs and spread malware to other internet-of-things (IoT) devices. To make the discovery, Check Point researchers built on earlier studies that showed how to control smart light bulbs. The new finding focused ...
- Ransomware Hits Maastricht University, All Systems Taken Down
December 27, 2019
Maastricht University (UM) announced that almost all of its Windows systems have been encrypted by ransomware following a cyber-attack that took place on Monday, December 23. UM is a university from the Netherlands with over 18,000 students, 4,400 employees, and 70,000 alumni, UM being placed in the top 500 universities in the world by five ranking tables in the last two ...
- New Plundervolt attack impacts Intel CPUs
December 10, 2019
Academics from three universities across Europe have disclosed today a new attack that impacts the integrity of data stored inside Intel SGX, a highly-secured area of Intel CPUs. The attack, which researchers have named Plundervolt, exploits the interface through which an operating system can control an Intel processor’s voltage and frequency — the same interface that allows ...
News • Insights • Analysis
