Security News
Northern Ireland's Department of Health has temporarily halted its COVID-19 vaccine certification online service following a data exposure incident. Some users of the COVIDCert NI service were presented with data of other users, under certain circumstances, says the Department.
Ireland dramatically loosened international travel restrictions on Monday, joining an EU-wide pandemic passport scheme weeks later than the rest of the bloc after a ransomware attack hobbled healthcare IT systems. All EU member states were connected to a matching digital Covid certificate system on July 1.
The Conti ransomware gang has released a free decryptor for Ireland's health service, the HSE, but warns that they will still sell or release the stolen data. Today, the ransomware gang posted a link to a free decryptor in their negotiation chat page for the HSE that can be used use to recover encrypted files for free.
The Conti ransomware gang failed to encrypt the systems of Ireland's Department of Health despite breaching its network and dropping Cobalt Strike beacons to deploy their malware across the network. The next day, at 07:00 AM, a human-operated Conti ransomware attack disabled some of HSE's devices, forcing the health service to shut down its entire IT infrastructure to limit the impact.
Ireland's Health Service Executive was hit by a ransomware attack late last week, forcing the organization to shut down its IT system on Friday. By Sunday it was learned that the Department of Health had also been attacked by what was assumed to be the same gang.
The murky world of ransomware criminals is all aflutter after it was revealed that Ireland's health services were hit by a second attack hot on the heels of one that took out its hospitals, while ransomware insurance refusenik Axa was itself hit with ransomware after its French branch vowed to stop buying off criminals on behalf of its customers. French-headquartered insurance company Axa suffered ransomware attacks against four of its subsidiaries in east Asia, according to the Financial Times.
Ireland's High Court on Friday rejected Facebook's bid to block an investigation that could potentially stop data transfers from the European Union to the United States. The Irish regulator launched its inquiry last summer after a top EU court decision over Facebook invalidated a key online data arrangement between Europe and the US. "The DPC decided to commence an 'own volition' inquiry ... to consider whether the actions of Facebook Ireland Ltd in making transfers of personal data relating to individuals in the European Union/European Economic Area are lawful, and whether any corrective power should be exercised by the DPC in that regard," the court statement noted.
Ireland's health service, the HSE, says they are refusing to pay a $20 million ransom demand to the Conti ransomware gang after the hackers encrypted computers and disrupted health care in the country. Ireland's Health Service Executive, the country's publicly funded healthcare system, shut down all of their IT systems on Friday after suffering a Conti ransomware attack.
Most recently a consulting Practice Manager and Executive Security Strategist at NTT Ltd., Ireland is a technology leader with management experience in security services, consulting, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, law enforcement and emergency services and three decades of technical experience in information security, IT systems, networks and enterprise operations. "We are so pleased to have Matt Ireland on board," said NTT Research President and CEO, Kazuhiro Gomi.
The National College of Ireland and the Technological University of Dublin have announced that ransomware attacks hit their IT systems. NCI is currently working on restoring IT services after being hit by a ransomware attack over the weekend that forced the college to take IT systems offline.