Successful Ransomware Attacks on Education Sector Grew 388% in Q3 2020
The number of successful ransomware attacks on the education sector increased 388% in the third quarter of 2020. According to Emsisoft, the education sector reported 31 ransomware incidents in Q3 2020. That’s a 388% increase over the 8 incidents that occurred in the previous quarter. Nine of the 31 ransomware ... Read More
Ukrainian Gets 9 Years in Prison for Trying to Steal $10M from Microsoft
A Ukrainian citizen received a nine-year prison sentence for a scheme in which he tried to steal $10 million from Microsoft. On November 9, the U.S. District Court in Seattle handed down the sentence to Volodymyr Kvashuk, 26, a Ukrainian citizen who was residing in Renton, Washington. According to court ... Read More
Computer Manufacturing Company Compal Discloses Security Incident
Computer manufacturing company Compal Electronics announced that it had suffered a security incident involving some of its systems. Qingxiong Lu, deputy manager director of Compal, told United News Network on November 9 that the company had experienced a security incident. In his explanation of the event, Qingxiong identified that the ... Read More
Ransomware Gangs Not Honoring Ransom Payments for Stolen Data
Security researchers observed that multiple ransomware gangs are not honoring the ransom payments received from victims for their stolen data. In its Quarterly Ransomware Report for Q3 2020, Coveware revealed that almost 50% of crypto-malware cases involved the threat to publish unencrypted data stolen from victims in addition to the ... Read More
Email Attacks Using Fear of Election Interference to Spread QBot
Digital attackers launched a malicious email campaign that used fear of election interference in order to spread the QBot trojan. On November 4, Malwarebytes came across an attack email. This message arrived as a thread reply in an attempt to boost its legitimacy. The body of the email did not ... Read More
REvil Ransomware Gang Acquire Source Code for KPOT 2.0 Infostealer
The operators of REvil ransomware came into possession of the source code for the KPOT 2.0 information-stealing malware variant. ZDNet reported that UNKN, a member of the REvil ransomware gang, acquired the source code for KPOT 2.0 in an auction announced by the malware’s author back in mid-October. #KPOT source ... Read More
N-Day Vulnerabilities: How They Threaten Your ICS Systems’ Security
In the last quarter of 2019, researchers at ClearSky uncovered an attack operation that they dubbed the “Fox Kitten Campaign.” Iranian actors used this offensive to gain persistent access into the networks of dozens of companies operating in Israel and around the world across the IT, telecommunication, oil and gas, ... Read More
Phishers Using Google Drive to Trick People into Visiting Malicious Websites
Reports emerged of phishers having abused a feature in Google Drive in an attempt to trick users into visiting malicious websites. In this scam wave, users reported having received Google Drive notifications in Russian or English asking them to collaborate on unfamiliar documents. Those documents contained links to scam websites ... Read More
Maze Ransomware Gang to Shut Down Operations
Security researchers learned that the Maze digital crime gang is in the process of shutting down its ransomware operations. Bleeping Computer began hearing rumors of the shutdown in early September 2020. In an email conversation, a ransomware attacker told the computer self-help site that the Maze gang had stopped encrypting ... Read More
President Trump’s Campaign Website Defaced by Cryptocurrency Scammers
Unknown individuals temporarily defaced the official campaign website of President Donald Trump with a cryptocurrency scam. Twitter user Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler was among the first to spot the defacement, which is believed to have occurred at around 16:00 PST on October 27. .@realDonaldTrump's campaign website has been hacked. Doing research ... Read More
