Data breaches are tricky to cover, and we want to report on them in an ethical way. That requires picking what should be reported for informed public discourse but avoiding topics that may encourage attackers' efforts to shame victims into paying a ransom and anything resembling data dump voyeurism.
After the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, I received a small postcard from Japan. The sender was Mt. Gox. Here's how I bought a bitcoin for $12 and had a painful front-row seat for the first big cryptocurrency exchange collapse, plus some thoughts about cryptocurrency.
The stark consequences of ransomware became painfully clear in Australia this week as attackers began releasing data from health insurer Medibank, one of the country's largest health insurers. Also, leaked chat logs reveal how the attackers accessed Medibank's systems.
Who is attempting to extort Australian health insurer Medibank? Why did Medibank tell its attackers it wouldn't pay a ransom? Will this deter future cyber extortionists? Here are a few thoughts on the high cybercrime drama playing out.
Should Australia's Medibank health insurer pay extortionists to prevent the release of sensitive medical documents related to millions of Australians? There's no easy answer to remedying what is the most severe cybercriminal incident in Australian history.
Is Australia's data breach wave a coincidence, bad luck or intentional targeting? Maybe all three. But the security weaknesses that have led to the incidents are not exotic. And the people behind these attacks are most likely workaday cybercriminals, not top-level nation-state attackers.
Australia's data breach debacle expanded on Thursday. Cyber extortionists who attacked Australian health insurer Medibank provided proof of their hack of medical data. Also, stolen data from Australian wine retailer Vinomofo was put up for sale on a Russian-language forum.
Australia's data regulator says organizations hit by ransomware may be underreporting data breaches because they haven't thoroughly figured out if data was taken. But an "absence of evidence" of a data breach in a ransomware attack isn't sufficient to declare that no data was taken.
Threat intelligence researchers are looking closely at REvil, the ransomware gang that infected up to 1,500 companies in a single swoop. A look at the group's online infrastructure shows clear lines to Russian and U.K. service providers that, in theory, could help law enforcement agencies but don't appear eager to...
The saga around how scores of aging Western Digital NAS devices were remotely erased has deepened with the discovery of a new, unknown software vulnerability. The situation underscores the problems of still-used devices that have been abandoned by manufacturers.
Bitcoin has enabled fast payments to cybercriminals pushing ransomware. How to deal with bitcoin is the subject of a spirited debate, with some arguing to restrict it. But bitcoin doesn't always favor cybercriminals, and it may actually be more of an ally than a foe by revealing webs of criminality.
Some 26 million passwords were exposed in a 1.2 terabyte batch of data found by NordLocker, a security company. It's workaday botnet data, but it highlights a hostile malware landscape, particularly for people still inclined to download pirated software.
The FTC rejected arguments from major technology companies and trade groups that independent repair shops increase risks to data security. That could help propel the "right to repair" movement, which contends manufacturers use anticompetitive tactics to lock consumers and independent repairers out.
Law enforcement agencies use forensics tools from Israeli company Cellebrite to gain access to locked mobile devices and extract data. But the creator of encrypted messaging app Signal says he's found vulnerabilities in Cellebrite's tools, raising questions about whether the extracted data can be trusted.
Security practitioners often tread a fine and not entirely well-defined legal line in collecting current and meaningful research. This research can also pose ethical questions when commercial sources for stolen data fall into a gray area.
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