- UK government “left council to deal with ransomware attack” that cost £11m
February 9, 2023
The government left Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to fight a massive ransomware attack alone for a week, with minimal support or correspondence, the council’s leader has said. Mary Lanigan told MPs yesterday that while police and cybercrime officers were on site within two days, help from Westminster was lacking. Recovering from the incident cost ...
- UK cracks down on ransomware actors
February 9, 2023
Seven Russian nationals have assets frozen and travel bans imposed ransomware is a tier 1 national security threat, with attacks against businesses and public sector organisations increasingly common. Recent victims include UK schools, local authorities and firms – whilst internationally the Irish Health Service Executive, Costa Rican government and American healthcare providers were targeted new campaign of ...
- ‘Real arms race’ on defending Irish health system against cyber attacks
February 9, 2023
There is a “real arms race” between cyber attackers and efforts to defend Irish health systems, a committee has heard. The Public Accounts Committee also heard that 32,000 letters had been issued in recent weeks to patients, clients and staff affected by the 2021 Health Service Executive (HSE) cyber attack. Read more… Source: independent.ie
- Enigma Stealer Targets Cryptocurrency Industry with Fake Jobs
February 9, 2023
Trend Micro researchers recently found an active campaign that uses a fake employment pretext targeting Eastern Europeans in the cryptocurrency industry to install an information stealer. In this campaign, the suspected Russian threat actors use several highly obfuscated and under-development custom loaders to infect those involved in the cryptocurrency industry with the Enigma Stealer (detected ...
- Beyond the basics: Implementing an active defense
February 9, 2023
Having an active defense posture, where the defenders actively use threat intelligence and their own environment telemetry to uncover potential compromises, is the next stage in the cyber security maturity road. Instead of waiting for detections to trigger, defenders can take initiative and hunt down threat actors inside their environment, putting a halt to their ...
- Darknet Marketplace Revenue Plummets After Hydra Raid
February 9, 2023
Revenue at dark web illicit marketplaces plunged in 2022 following seizure by U.S. and German police last spring of what was then the world’s largest online bazaar for illegal goods and services. The April shutdown of the Russian-speaking Hydra Market sent the illicit world of Russian-language darknet markets into a tailspin that cut overall revenue for ...
- New ESXiArgs ransomware version prevents VMware ESXi recovery
February 8, 2023
New ESXiArgs ransomware attacks are now encrypting more extensive amounts of data, making it much harder, if not impossible, to recover encrypted VMware ESXi virtual machines. Last Friday, a massive and widespread automated ransomware attack encrypted over 3,000 Internet-exposed VMware ESXi servers using a new ESXiArgs ransomware. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer
- SNP MP Stewart McDonald’s emails hacked by Russian group
February 8, 2023
An MP has told the BBC his emails have been stolen and he fears they will be made public. The SNP’s Stewart McDonald said the hack took place in January and he wanted to pre-empt any publication sharing them. Read more… Source: BBC News
- Graphiron: New Russian information stealing malware deployed against Ukraine
February 8, 2023
The Nodaria espionage group (aka UAC-0056) is using a new piece of information stealing malware against targets in Ukraine. The malware (Infostealer.Graphiron) is written in Go and is designed to harvest a wide range of information from the infected computer, including system information, credentials, screenshots, and files. The earliest evidence of Graphiron dates from October 2022. ...
- CISA and FBI Release ESXiArgs Ransomware Recovery Guidance
February 8, 2023
Today, CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory, ESXiArgs Ransomware Virtual Machine Recovery Guidance. This advisory describes the ongoing ransomware campaign known as “ESXiArgs.” Malicious cyber actors may be exploiting known vulnerabilities in unpatched and out-of-service or out-of-date versions of VMware ESXi software to gain access to ESXi servers ...
- NIST Selects ‘Lightweight Cryptography’ Algorithms to Protect Small Devices
February 7, 2023
Lightweight electronics, meet the heavyweight champion for protecting your information: Security experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have announced a victor in their program to find a worthy defender of data generated by small devices. The winner, a group of cryptographic algorithms called Ascon, will be published as NIST’s lightweight cryptography ...

