Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Estée Lauder Leaves Massive Database Unprotected Earlier this week researchers discovered an unsecured database containing over 440 million records belonging to Estee Lauder, a major make-up manufacturer. Though the company has confirmed that no customer data was stored in that database, they are still unsure on how long it was left

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Tax Season Brings Emotet to the Front As Americans prepare for tax season, Emotet authors have started a new campaign that imitates a W-9 tax form requested by the target. As with most malicious phishing, an attached document asks users to enable macros when viewing the files. This campaign can be particularly dangerous, because man

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Indonesian Magecart Hackers Arrested At least three individuals were arrested in connection to the infamous Magecart information stealing malware. Thanks to the combined efforts of several international law enforcement agencies, numerous servers issuing commands to awaiting Magecart scripts have been taken down in both Indonesia and

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Point-of-Sale Breach Targets U.S. Cannabis Industry Late last month, researchers discovered a database owned by the company THSuite that appeared to contain information belonging to roughly 30,000 cannabis customers in the U.S. With no authentication, the researchers were able to find contact information as well as cannabis purchase

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Ryuk Adds New Features to Increase Devastation The latest variant of the devastating Ryuk ransomware has been spotted with a new feature that allows it to turn on devices connected to the infected network. By taking advantage of Wake-on-Lan functionality, Ryuk can is able to mount additional remote devices to further its encryption

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Snake Ransomware Slithers Through Networks A new ransomware variant, dubbed “Snake,” has been found using more sophisticated obfuscation while targeting entire networks, rather than only one machine. In addition, Snake will append any encrypted file extensions with five random characters following the filetype itself. Finally, the i

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. US Coast Guard Facility Hit with Ransomware During the last week of December a US Coast Guard facility was the target of a Ryuk ransomware attack that shut down operations for over 30 hours. Though the Coast Guard has implemented multiple cybersecurity regulations in just the last six months or so, this attack broke through the weak

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Honda Customer Database Exposed Officials have been working over the past work to secure a database containing highly sensitive information belonging to more than 26,000 North American customers of the Honda motor company. The database in question was originally created in October and was only discovered on December 11. While no fin

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Zeppelin Ransomware Spreading Over the last month, researchers have been monitoring the spread of a new ransomware variant, Zeppelin. This is the latest version of the ransomware-as-a-service that started life as VegaLocker/Buran and has differentiated itself by focusing on healthcare and IT organizations in both the U.S. and Europe

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. ZeroCleare Malware Wiping Systems IBM researchers have been tracking the steady rise in ZeroCleare deployments throughout the last year, culminating in a significant rise in 2019. This malware is deployed on both 32 and 64-bit systems in highly targeted attacks, with the capability to completely wipe the system by exploiting the Eld

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Shade Ransomware Takes Crown as Most Distributed Variant Over the course of 2019, one ransomware variant, known as Shade, has taken over 50 percent of market share for ransomware delivered via email. Otherwise known as Troldesh, this variant receives regular updates to further improve it’s encrypting and methods of generating additi

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Orvis Internal Credentials Leaked A database containing login credentials for numerous internal systems belonging to Orvis, one of America’s oldest retailers, was found to be publicly available for an unknown amount of time. Why the database was publicly accessible at all is still unclear, but the retailer has determined that many c

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. Bed, Bath, & Beyond Data Breach An official announcement made earlier this week acknowledged illicit access to customer data used in online accounts for Bed, Bath, & Beyond. While the breach didn’t affect payment card information, the retailer quickly began contacting affected customers and took steps to safeguard against fu

Reading Time: ~ 2 min. BEC Scam Takes Millions from Nikkei America Officials for Nikkei are working to identify the perpetrators of a recent business email compromise (BEC) scam that took roughly $29 million from the company’s American subsidiary. The illicit transfer took place sometime during the end of September and, though they did make a public state

Reading Time: ~ 4 min. In my previous blog post, Why Healthcare Organizations are Easy Targets for Cybercrime, I discussed various reasons that hospitals and healthcare organizations make desirable and lucrative targets for hackers. In this second installment, I’ll go over how criminals are attacking these organizations, the methods they use, and also what n