Security News
Ransomware-wielding attackers - aided by a service economy that gives them access to more advanced attack tools - are increasingly targeting organizations rather than individuals to shake them down for bigger ransom payoffs, says McAfee's John Fokker. The allure of businesses is clear: Attackers can demand more money, earning a bigger potential haul from any given attack, aided by a service economy designed to help them more easily turn a criminal profit via increasingly advanced attack tools, he says.
The Reading Municipal Light Department, an electric utility in Massachusetts, informed customers on Monday that its systems were targeted last week in a ransomware attack. The company says the ransomware attack had no impact on the delivery of electricity, and it has found no evidence that customer financial data, which is stored on third-party systems, has been compromised as a result of the incident.
Organizations are detecting and containing attacks faster as the global median dwell time, defined as the duration between the start of a cyber intrusion and it being identified, was 56 days. Consultants attribute this trend to organizations improving their detection programs, as well as changes in attacker behaviors such as the continued rise in disruptive attacks which often have shorter dwell times than other attack types.
A home healthcare company has filed 17 breach reports after a ransomware attack on its cloud-based electronic health records vendor last December, illustrating once again how a vendor breach can have a wide impact. Personal Touch Home Care, a Lake Success, New York-based provider that has 17 offices in six states, recently submitted the breach reports on behalf of its various locations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to the HHS Office for Civil Rights' HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website, which lists health data breaches affecting 500 or more individuals.
The US Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday said that an infection by an unidentified ransomware strain forced the shutdown of a natural-gas pipeline for two days. The alert, issued by DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, didn't say where the affected natural gas compression facility is located.
A ransomware attack has hit a natural gas compression facility in the U.S., the feds have warned. The attack resulted in a two-day pipeline shutdown as the unnamed victim worked to bring systems back online from backups.
America's Homeland Security this week disclosed it recently responded to a ransomware infection at an unnamed natural gas plant. It did spread from an office computer through the plant's IT network to the operational network of PCs that monitor the plant, overwriting documents and other data as it went.
A ransomware attack on a U.S. natural gas compression facility led to a two-day shutdown of operations, according to an alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. From there, attackers planted what the agency called "Commodity ransomware" within both networks that encrypted data throughout the facility.
An unnamed US gas pipeline operator has falled victim to ransomware, which managed to encrypt data both on its IT and operational technology networks and led to a shutdown of the affected natural gas compression facility, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has revealed. "Although the direct operational impact of the cyberattack was limited to one control facility, geographically distinct compression facilities also had to halt operations because of pipeline transmission dependencies. This resulted in an operational shutdown of the entire pipeline asset lasting approximately two days."
A ransomware infection at a natural gas compression facility in the United States resulted in a two-day operational shutdown of an entire pipeline asset, the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency revealed on Tuesday. A compression facility helps transport natural gas from one location to another through a pipeline.