Security News

US offers Julian Assange time in Australian prison instead of American supermax if he loses London extradition fight
2021-07-08 19:45

Julian Assange will remain in a British prison for now after the US government won permission to appeal against a January court ruling that freed him from extradition to America. News of the appeal came as the US Department of Justice offered Assange a deal that would keep him out of the notoriously cruel US supermax prisons, according to The Times.

US warns of action against ransomware gangs if Russia refuses
2021-07-06 21:09

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says that the US will take action against cybercriminal groups from Russia if the Russian government refuses to do so. She also said that high-level US and Russian officials will meet again next week to address the recent attacks that have targeted US organizations this year.

US chemical distributor shares info on DarkSide ransomware data theft
2021-07-03 14:00

World-leading chemical distribution company Brenntag has shared additional info on what data was stolen from its network by DarkSide ransomware operators during an attack from late April 2021 that targeted its North America division. As revealed in data breach notification letters sent to affected individuals during late June, the chemical distribution firm became aware of the attack on April 28, two days after the DarkSide operators breached its network.

US email hacker gets his “computer trespass” conviction reversed
2021-07-02 18:25

A couple of months after Y's departure, X received an email from another colleague, whom we shall call Z. and Z received a "Bounce" message from a external email address Q that Z hadn't copied in on the original email. Smelling a rat, Z alerted Y to inform him about the mysterious "Q" in the email equation.

Microsoft tells US lawmakers cloud has changed the game on data privacy, gets 10 info demands a day from cops
2021-07-02 18:15

The US House Committee on the Judiciary met on Wednesday to hear testimony on the government's practice of secretly subpoenaing cloud service providers, and Microsoft was happy to oblige. Tom Burt, Microsoft's veep of customer security & trust, testified as a representative of cloud service providers.

US insurance giant AJG reports data breach after ransomware attack
2021-07-02 12:39

Arthur J. Gallagher, a US-based global insurance brokerage and risk management firm, is mailing breach notification letters to potentially impacted individuals following a ransomware attack that hit its systems in late September. "Working with the cybersecurity and forensic specialists to determine what may have happened and what information may have been affected, we determined that an unknown party accessed or acquired data contained within certain segments of our network between June 3, 2020 and September 26, 2020," AJG said.

Cybersecurity study: SolarWinds attack cost affected US companies an average of $12 million
2021-06-28 12:00

New survey finds that the attack also motivated more information sharing within the industry and improved supply chain security. The good news is that security teams are beefing up network defenses, but the bad news is that most companies have recently suffered a cybersecurity incident that required a board meeting.

US brokerage firms warned of 'FINRA Support' phishing attacks
2021-06-24 14:12

US securities industry regulator FINRA is warning brokerage firms of an ongoing phishing attack pretending to be from 'FINRA Support. FINRA is a government-authorized non-profit organization that regulates all exchange markets and securities firms publicly active in the United States.

US Takes Down Iran-linked News Sites, Alleges Disinformation
2021-06-23 01:59

American authorities seized a range of Iran's state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, a move that appeared to be a far-reaching crackdown on Iranian media amid heightened tensions between the two countries. Relations between Iran and the U.S. have deteriorated for years following President Donald Trump's withdrawal from Tehran's nuclear deal and the return of devastating sanctions on the country.

US Air Force announces plan to assassinate molluscs with hypersonic missile
2021-06-22 08:31

The United States Air Force has issued a strangely specific threat to certain mollusc species living in the area of an upcoming weapons test. US military website The Warzone recently spotted that in an environmental report relating to future tests at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site around Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the USAF stated that a test of its AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, or ARRW, would lead to four top-shell snails and up to 90 giant clams being killed.