- Oxford University lab with COVID-19 research links targeted by hackers
February 26, 2021
An Oxford University lab conducting research into the coronavirus pandemic has been compromised by cyberattackers. Oxford University, one of the most prominent educational institutions in the UK, was made aware of the security breach on Thursday. The university confirmed that a security incident took place at the Division of Structural Biology lab, also known as “Strubi,” after ...
- Health Website Leaks 8 Million COVID-19 Test Results
February 25, 2021
Yet another human-related error — this time a flaw in a health department website in the state of Bengal, India — has exposed the confidential results of COVID-19 tests as well as personally identifying information (PII) for an entire geographic region’s population. Test results related to more than 8 million people potentially were exposed before the ...
- ENISA Releases Guidelines for Cloud Security for Healthcare Services
February 25, 2021
The healthcare sector is undergoing digitalization and adopts new technologies to improve patient care, offer new services for remote patients and reach operational excellence. The integration of new technologies in the complex healthcare IT infrastructure creates new challenges regarding data protection and cybersecurity. On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a driver for increased ...
- COVID pandemic causes spike in cyberattacks against hospitals, medical companies
February 24, 2021
Cyberattacks against healthcare organizations have doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, research suggests. On Wednesday, IBM released the company’s annual X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, which analyzed data from the previous year to track the evolution of new threats, malware development, and cyberattacks. The 2021 index includes some notable trends, perhaps the most significant being how many threat actors ...
- Rising healthcare breaches driven by hacking and unsecured servers
February 17, 2021
2020 was a bad year for healthcare organizations in the U.S., which had to deal with a record-high number of cybersecurity incidents on the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hacking and IT incidents affected the industry to a larger extent last year, accounting for more than 67% of all breaches and exposed the personal data of ...
- mHealth Apps Expose Millions to Cyberattacks
February 12, 2021
Some 23 million mobile health (mHealth) application users are exposed to application programming interface (API) attacks that could expose sensitive information, according to researchers. Generally speaking, APIs are an intermediary between applications that defines how they can talk to one another and allowing them to swap information. Researcher Alissa Knight with Approov tried to break into ...
- Minnesota: Netgain ransomware incident impacts local governments
February 2, 2021
The ransomware incident that Netgain, a provider of managed IT services, had late last year rippled onto its customers. Now, Ramsey County, Minnesota, is informing clients of the Family Health Division program that the hackers may have accessed personal data. The government of Ramsey County learned about the potential breach on December 2, 2020, when Netagin ...
- Cybercriminals kick-off 2021 with sweepstakes, credit card, delivery scams
January 22, 2021
Trend Micro researches have predicted that this year, cybercriminals will continue to take advantage of Covid-19-related effects and incidents — such as people’s reliance on online purchases and e-services and the increased need for financial assistance — in order to bait victims and steal critical information. Even though new ways of stealing information regularly arise, ...
- Medical Device Security: Diagnosis Critical
January 18, 2021
A hacked insulin pump is the last thing a diabetic wants to worry about when life-saving fluids are pumped into their body. Sadly, concerns about medical device IT security are a healthcare reality. Last year, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued more than a half-dozen warnings tied to connected drug pumps alone. Vulnerabilities ...
- Ransomware attacks now to blame for half of healthcare data breaches
January 15, 2021
Almost half of all data breaches in hospitals and the wider healthcare sector are as a result of ransomware attacks according to new research. Ransomware gangs are increasingly adding an extra layer of extortion to attacks by not only encrypting networks and demanding hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in bitcoin to restore them, ...
- Hackers leak stolen Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data online
January 12, 2021
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) today revealed that some of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine data stolen from its servers in December was leaked online. EMA is a decentralized agency responsible for reviewing and approving COVID-19 vaccines, as well as for evaluating, monitoring, and supervising any new medicines introduced to the EU. “The ongoing investigation of the cyberattack ...
- 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 ...
- Disgruntled Former Employee Disrupted Shipments of Needed PPE During Pandemic
January 6, 2021
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached the United States last spring, a Georgia-based medical equipment packaging company worked to get personal protective equipment (PPE) to medical workers treating sick patients. But a disgruntled former employee thwarted those efforts at a time when protective equipment was desperately needed. Christopher Dobbins, a vice-president in the company who’d been fired a ...
- Cyberattacks on Healthcare Spike 45% Since November
January 5, 2021
As COVID-19 ravages international healthcare systems, cybercriminals have decided to leverage the increasingly dire circumstances to squeeze a few bucks out of the human suffering. According to new findings from Check Point Software, healthcare organizations have seen a 45-percent increase in cyberattacks since November, which is more than double other industry sectors, which a average 22-percent ...
- Singapore police had used COVID-19 contact tracing data in murder probe
January 5, 2021
The Singapore government has defended its decision to allow the police to access the country’s COVID-19 contact tracing data when necessary, in order to safeguard public safety and interest. It reveals that data collected via the TraceTogether platform already has been tapped at least once to assist in a homicide investigation. Its defence came a day ...
- Emotet malware hits Lithuania’s National Public Health Center
December 30, 2020
The internal networks of Lithuania’s National Center for Public Health (NVSC) and several municipalities have been infected with Emotet malware following a large campaign targeting the country’s state institutions. “When infected recipients opened infected messages, the virus entered the internal networks of the institutions,” NVSC officials said in a statement published today. “Infected computers, after downloading additional ...
- Lazarus covets COVID-19-related intelligence
December 23, 2020
As the COVID-19 crisis grinds on, some threat actors are trying to speed up vaccine development by any means available. We have found evidence that actors, such as the Lazarus group, are going after intelligence that could help these efforts by attacking entities related to COVID-19 research. While tracking the Lazarus group’s continuous campaigns targeting various ...
- FBI warns of ongoing COVID-19 vaccine related fraud schemes
December 22, 2020
US federal agencies have warned about scammers exploiting the public’s interest in the COVID-19 vaccine to harvest personal information and steal money through multiple ongoing and emerging fraud schemes. The warning was issued earlier today through the FBI National Press Office by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Health and Human Services Office ...
- 45 Million Medical Images Left Exposed Online
December 15, 2020
More than 45 million medical images—and the personally identifiable information (PII) and personal healthcare information (PHI) associated with them–have been left exposed online due to unsecured technology that’s typically used to store, send and receive medical data, new research has found. A team from CybelAngel Analyst Team uncovered sensitive medical records and images–including X-rays CT scans ...
- The story of the year: remote work
December 10, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has caused sudden, sweeping change around the world. The necessary social distancing measures are having an impact on all of us. One large part of society that has been affected by these measures more than others is the employed. While direct customer facing businesses like restaurants and retailers have had to change ...