Security News

Many security pros who are doing an excellent job in handling incidents find effectively communicating the ongoing process with their management a much more challenging task. Cynet addresses this gap with the IR Reporting for Management PPT template, providing CISOs and CIOs with a clear and intuitive tool to report both the ongoing IR process and its conclusion.

Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, reportedly paid $5 million to criminals behind a ransomware attack that has sent fuel prices spiking up and down the East Coast. Sources familiar with the payout told Bloomberg that representatives of Colonial Pipeline paid the cybergang known as DarkSide the ransom it demanded in return for a decryption tool that allowed the firm to restore its computer network disabled in last week's attack.

Colonial Pipeline's operators reportedly paid $5m to regain control of their digital systems and get the pipeline pumping oil following last week's ransomware infection. News of the payoff was broken by Bloomberg - which not only cited anonymous sources but also mocked other news outlets' anonymous sources for saying earlier this week that the American pipeline operator would never pay the ransom.

On Wednesday, software company Egress released a report titled "Outbound email: Microsoft 365's security blind spot" highlighting email data breaches and IT frustrations during the coronavirus pandemic. "We can't ignore the risk of email data loss from Microsoft 365 and the limitations of static DLP solutions to mitigate the outbound email security risks that organizations face today."

Domains'n'hosting outfit Namecheap harboured more than a quarter of all known phishing sites that falsely posed as UK government web presences during 2020, according to the National Cyber Security Centre today. It also encountered the usual COVID-themed ones we've all become familiar with over the last year - fake copies of the NHS Test and Trace app laced with malware - plus sites impersonating Capita TV Licensing, the outsourced subscription sales arm of the BBC. Email scams were also popular, with 26,000 being shut down after netizens flooded the NCSC's email reporting portal with complaints of four million suspicious messages.

Brit railway company Merseyrail is understood to have suffered a ransomware attack - and the crooks responsible reportedly pwned a director's Office 365 account to email employees and journalists about it. Merseyrail's network covers 68 stations around Liverpool, Birkenhead and Southport, stretching as far south as Chester.

More than 580 WordPress vulnerabilities were disclosed in 2020, but a vast majority of them impact third-party plugins and themes rather than the WordPress core, according to a new report from website security company Patchstack. The report is based on data from Patchstack's WordPress vulnerability database, which includes information collected by the company's internal research team and its bug bounty community, by third-party cybersecurity vendors, and by independent security researchers.

Rogers is currently affected by a nationwide outage in Canada that prevents customers from accessing wireless voice and data services. The outage started at approximately 1 AM, with users taking to social media to voice their frustration that they can't access voice or data.

Europol's Serious Organized Crime Threat Assessment report 2021 summarizes the criminal threat of the last four years and provides insights into what to expect over the next four years. Organized crime is not limited to cybercrime, but cybercrime has become a major part of organized criminal activity.

Endpoint protection for remote workers is still a huge concern, but one report finds that there may be light at the end of the tunnel as businesses signal they're spending more on user training. A report from anti-theft software company Prey found that, while cybersecurity concerns regarding remote work are still prevalent, most businesses have taken positive steps to improve their security postures and have improved their security training over the past year.