Questions concerning responsibility for the current epidemic of ransomware events are common, and seek to identify some concrete party to hold accountable for incidents. Yet the immediate perpetrators – largely (but not exclusively) criminal gangs operating in Eastern Europe and Russia – either represent too remote an entity for blame, Read more
The information security industry finds itself, as of this writing, in the midst of a ransomware pandemic. While Business Email Compromise (BEC) likely remains more financially successful overall, much of this success is due to far wider scope and selection of victims. Ransomware, while potentially less costly in a direct Read more
In April 2021 the Babuk ransomware gang, already a concerning entity, gained additional notoriety for compromising the Washington, DC police department. As part of this incident, the criminals threatened to release confidential files relating to police operations to spur payment. The group in question earlier gained attention for the combination Read more
08 December 2020 will be remembered as a significant day in information security history. On that day, information security giant and, through its Mandiant division, pioneer FireEye disclosed that they were compromised by a likely state-sponsored entity. (Specific attribution is lacking at this time, although there are rumors APT29/Cozy Bear Read more
“Energetic Bear” (also known as Dragonfly, Crouching Yeti, etc. etc.) has been in the news lately given a recent series of intrusions targeting local government and critical infrastructure entities in the United States. While the group has gained attention recently, its activities go back at least a decade with the Read more
TrickBot was in the news quite a bit in early October 2020. Starting with reports of TrickBot disruption in late September 2020 subsequently linked to United States Cyber Command (USCC), events ramped up with an independent coordinated infrastructure take-down organized by Microsoft coming shortly thereafter. There are many avenues of Read more
A common social media refrain in technology circles is the complaint of becoming “too political” – that content producers should focus on technical or professional subjects while avoiding charged, politically-tinged areas. This sentiment has always rung somewhat hollow to me as the concept of the political can be viewed as Read more
Note: This post was edited in response to feedback concerning Tyler Technologies and the fundamental claims of the original article. With respect to Tyler, while the company certainly provides extensive support and software products to local governments, a review of the company’s offerings shows nothing specific to election reporting or Read more
Media, social feeds, and other sources of news are awash with stories of the “first death linked to ransomware” following an incident in Düsseldorf on 09 September 2020. Since the event, authorities in Nordrhein Westphalen have launched an investigation treating the death as “negligent homicide”. At the time of this Read more
F5 released a patch on 30 June 2020 tied to a doozy of a vulnerability discovered by Positive Technologies. The vulnerability didn’t get much attention until Positive Technology’s blog on the matter was released on 02 July 2020, right before a holiday weekend in the United States. The criticality of Read more