Intruders took advantage of limits on the NSA’s domestic surveillance capabilities.
Category: cybercrime/malcode – Page 156
A ransomware attack has crippled the city’s teacher discipline system, The Post has learned.
A contractor that provides hearing transcripts for the city Department of Education, the Ubiqus Group, said it “was hit by a ransomware-type cybersecurity incident” on Dec. 4.
“As a precautionary measure, we have shut down all our IT systems across all our operating sites,” the company announced on its website.
The country hopes to defend its citizens from cyberattacks through a set of new measures.
A data breach broker is selling the allegedly stolen user records for twenty-six companies on a hacker forum, BleepingComputer has learned.
When threat actors and hacking groups breach a company and steal their user databases, they commonly work with data breach brokers who market and sell the data for them. Brokers will then create posts on hacker forums and dark web marketplaces to market the stolen data.
Last Friday, a data broker began selling the combined total of 368.8 million stolen user records for twenty-six companies on a hacker forum.
In October, threat actors hit the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn and the University of Vermont Health Network. The cyber attack took place on October 28 and disrupted services at the UVM Medical Center and affiliated facilities.
A month later, the University of Vermont Medical Center was continuing to recover from the cyber attack that paralyzed the systems at the Burlington hospital.
In early December, Hospital CEO Dr. Stephen Leffler announced that the attack that took place in late October on the computer systems of the University of Vermont Medical Center is costing the hospital about $1.5 million a day in lost revenue and recovery costs.
The end of the year in cybersecurity mirrored the wider world by concluding in catastrophe: With more than 10000 people dying every day from Covid-19, a highly sophisticated electronic espionage campaign targeted U.S. government agencies and critical private industry, all customers of a single company: SolarWinds.
But there are some champions trying to make the online world a safer place. Our inaugural Forbes Cybersecurity Awards celebrate their achievements.
“FUJIFILM Corporation (President: Kenji Sukeno) is pleased to announce that it has achieved the world’s record 317 Gbpsi recording density with magnetic tapes using a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe)*4. The record was achieved in tape running test, conducted jointly with IBM Research. This represents the development of epoch-making technology that can produce data cartridges with the capacity of 580TB (terabytes), approximately 50 times greater than the capacity of current cartridges*5. The capacity of 580TB is enough to store data equivalent to 120000 DVDs.”
TOKYO, December 162020 — FUJIFILM Corporation (President: Kenji Sukeno) is pleased to announce that it has achieved the world’s record 317 Gbpsi recording density with magnetic tapes using a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) *4. The record was achieved in tape running test, conducted jointly with IBM Research. This represents the development of epoch-making technology that can produce data cartridges with the capacity of 580TB (terabytes), approximately 50 times greater than the capacity of current cartridges *5. The capacity of 580TB is enough to store data equivalent to 120000 DVDs.
SrFe is a magnetic material that has very high magnetic properties and is stable to maintain high performance even when processed into fine particles. It is widely used as a raw material for producing magnets for motors. Fujifilm has applied its proprietary technology to successfully develop ultra-fine SrFe magnetic particles, which can be used as a magnetic material for producing particulate magnetic tape media for data storage. The company has been conducting R&D for commercial use of SrFe magnetic particles as potential replacement of Barium Ferrite (BaFe) magnetic particles, currently used in magnetic tape data storage media. Magnetic tapes used in this test have been produced at the company’s existing coating facility, confirming the ability to support mass production and commercialization.
The amount of data in the society is exponentially increasing due to the introduction of high-definition 4K / 8K video, advancement in IoT / ICT, and the proliferation of Big Data analysis. “Cold Data,” or data that was generated a long time ago and rarely accessed, is said to account for over 80% of all data available today. There is a fast-growing trend of utilizing such Cold Data and other accumulated data, creating the need to secure safe, affordable and long-term data storage. Magnetic tapes have been used by major data centers and research organizations for many years as they not only offer benefits including large storage capacity, low cost and long-term storage performance, but also create air gap data protection, physically isolated from the network, thereby minimizing the risk of data damage or loss caused by cyberattacks.
The companies involved used compromised software, but it’s not clear if hackers entered their networks. Finding out could be difficult.
Just in time for the Christmas holiday, Emotet is sending the gift of Trickbot.
After a lull of nearly two months, the Emotet botnet has returned with updated payloads and a campaign that is hitting 100, 000 targets per day.
Emotet started life as a banking trojan in 2014 and has continually evolved to become a full-service threat-delivery mechanism. It can install a collection of malware on victim machines, including information stealers, email harvesters, self-propagation mechanisms and ransomware. It was last seen in volume in October, targeting volunteers for the Democratic National Committee (DNC); and before that, it became active in July after a five-month hiatus, dropping the Trickbot trojan. Before that, in February, it was seen in a campaign that sent SMS messages purporting to be from victims’ banks.
[Editor’s Note: Independent security consultant Christopher Budd worked previously in Microsoft’s Security Response Center for 10 years.]
Analysis: To understand where the SolarWinds attackers are going next, and how to defend against them, look to the clouds.
The SolarWinds supply chain attacks are unprecedented in many ways. The attacks are sophisticated in execution, broad in scope, and incredibly potent in their effectiveness. But perhaps most notable is the unprecedented manner in which the SolarWinds attackers seem to be seeking access to cloud-based services as one of their key objectives.