THE LATEST CYBERSECURITY NEWS & DEVELOPMENTS, PRESENTED BY CFC UNDERWRITING
When the Bee Gees sang that ‘the lights all went out in Massachusetts’, they probably weren’t referring to a cyber attack on the US power grid. Fifty years later, if the predictions of security firm Symantec are correct, this may soon become a regular occurrence. Hackers have recently succeeded in… Read more »
Ukraine has been cementing its rather unenviable position as one of the world’s leading cyber trouble hot spots. The Petya (or notPetya) malware strain that ended up wreaking havoc in over 60 countries worldwide originated in a Ukrainian accountancy business before spreading through the country’s airports, banks and supermarkets. In… Read more »
Hackers believed to be from Ukraine have released emails from senior Kremlin official and Putin sidekick Vladislav ‘Grey Cardinal’ Surkov. Amongst the thousands of messages, dating from September 2013 to November 2014, are several that give insights into the Russian invasion of Crimea and subsequent skirmishes with Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Russia… Read more »
It is rumoured that ministers attending Teresa May’s cabinet meetings will in future have to leave their smartwatches at the door – to avoid the Russians listening in. Following on from several well-publicised cyber security breaches during the US presidential election campaign, the British Government is believed to be taking… Read more »
Russian hackers are certainly going at it full throttle at the moment… After ‘bears’ hacking the DNC, the NSA related hack of zero day vulnerabilities and Taiwan’s ATM bank heist, Russia-based hackers are believed to have also hacked into several major Point of Sale (POS) equipment companies. These manufacturers make… Read more »
Just when the US election seemed to have reached unprecedented levels of farce, a new joker has appeared in the pack. After the Bush/Gore vote-counting debacle in 2000, America introduced an electronic voting system. While this solved a lot of problems, it created a number of new ones – as… Read more »
Satana, a new strain of ransomware believed to originate in Russia, is posing a fresh threat to computer security. On the one hand it has the ability to encrypt files. On the other, it can corrupt Windows’ Master Boot Record (MBR), blocking the booting process. Victims have to pay a… Read more »
Hundreds of files of confidential political research produced by the Democratic Party continue to be leaked after last week’s hack attack. US security firm Crowdstrike had revealed that two groups of Russian hackers were implicated in the break-in targeting the Democratic National Congress’s computer network – stealing research on Republican… Read more »
Recent attacks on the German parliament’s computer system have been attributed to a hacking collective ostensibly working for the Russian state. Though Russia has not responded to this allegation, German authorities believe the group to be Sofacy/APT 28, a collective closely allied with the Russian state. There has been a… Read more »
In December, the computers at a power station in western Ukraine took on a life of their own. Operators watched in complete bemusement as cursors began to operate seemingly of their own free will and took offline a substation – meaning thousands of people were left without heat or light…. Read more »