IT Security Breaches

A newly-identified privilege escalation flaw in Dell SupportAssist could leave millions of Dell PCs and laptops vulnerable attack. Threat actors could employ malicious software to elevate their privileges to administrator level and hijack the device for their nefarious purposes. The flaw affects both the home 9 (v 3.2.1 and prior) and business (v 2.0) versions … Read more

Microsoft has issued patches for 88 vulnerabilities this patch Tuesday. Of the vulnerabilities, 20 were rated critical. One servicing stack and 4 advisories were also released in the update. Microsoft stated that there was no evidence to suggest that threat actors had been actively exploiting the vulnerabilities in the wild. SandboxEscaper, a security researcher, identified … Read more

Microsoft has issued patches for 79 vulnerabilities this May 2019 Patch Tuesday. Of the vulnerabilities, 22 were rated critical. Adobe also issued patches for 84 vulnerabilities, 50 of which were critical. One critical flaw addressed by Microsoft left affected users vulnerable to WannaCry-style malware attacks. This vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in Remote Desktop Services and can … Read more

A vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic Server is being exploited in the wild by a new ransomware variant named Sodinokibi. On April 26, Oracle released an out-of-band patch to address the vulnerability (CVE-2019-2725). There have been several reported cases of the vulnerability being exploited in the wild. Oracle WebLogic Server is part of Oracle Middleware, a … Read more

Southern Hills Eye Care in Sioux City, Iowa, has announced that a recent ransomware attack on their facility may have compromised patient PHI. Ransomware is a variant of malware that prevents which hackers use to extort victims. The malware prevents the victim from accessing their computer, or files on their computer until a ransom is … Read more

The assisted living facility provider DePaul has announced that a successful phishing attack on its networks has compromised patient data. DePaul, which operates facilities in New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina, discovered the breach on February 1, 2019. IT security staff immediately took steps to secure the compromised account and block the unauthorised individual’s … Read more

Rush University Medical Center has announced that a data breach incident at a financial services vendor has compromised the PHI of 45,000 of their patients. The financial services vendor informed Rush of the incident on January 22, 2019. A member of staff at the vendor was caught sharing a file containing patient PHI with an … Read more

The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has issued a medical advisory about vulnerabilities found in the BD FACSLyric flow cytometry solution. ICS-CERT is a governmental organisation that works to reduce the risk of cybercrime to US businesses. The medical advisory stated the flaw in the device, manufactured by Becton, Dickinson, and Company … Read more

An investigation has been launched into a recent cyberattack that disrupted the printing of several major newspapers. The cyberattack on Tribune Publishing, attributed to a malware infection, caused disruption to several newspaper print runs including those of the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Tribune, and the west coast editions of the New York Times and … Read more

Beazley’s, a specialist insurance group, has released their quarterly Breach Insight Report for Q3 2018. The report concerned the attacks managed by Beazley Breach Response Services, which deals with the aftermath of an attack, including the investigation and the breach response. One of the most prevalent findings of the report is the huge rise in … Read more

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has announced that the email accounts of two employees have been compromised following cyberattacks on two August 23 and August 29, 2018. On August 24, CHOP, a paediatric healthcare facility and primary care provider, discovered an unauthorized individual had gained access to the email account of one of the physicians … Read more

Reliable Respiratory, a respiratory care provider, has announced that it has fallen victim to a phishing attack. Reliable Respiratory, based in Norwood, MA, stated that IT staff discovered the breach when they detected suspicious activity on an employee’s email account on July 3. The organisation immediately launched an investigation, which revealed that a hacker had … Read more

Proofpoint has announced the discovery of a new malware strain called Marap. Security researchers at Proofpoint stated that Marap malware is currently being used for gathering information about victims. The threat actor’s aim appears to be the creation of a network of infected users which they can target in future attacks. The malware operates by … Read more

A ransomware attack on the San Francisco Transport System in November 2016 resulted in the encryption of computers used by the city’s light rail system. The criminals responsible for the attack demanded ransom of 100 Bitcoin (approxiately $70,000) for the key to unlock the encryption. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) stated that although … Read more

It has been confirmed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are to investigate Yahoo concerning two enormous data breaches that were made public in late 2016. The controls put in place by Yahoo to prevent data breaches will not fall under the SEC investigation, but rather if the web services provider took too … Read more

It has been revealed that Samba might possibly be vulnerable to network worm attacks similar to those which were utilized to deliver WannaCry ransomware on the 12th of May 2017. Unix, Linux and numerous NAS devices use Samba to add Windows file and print sharing services. Additionally, Samba may be employed as an Active Directory … Read more

In late 2016, a new ransomware variant emerged which is now being used in attacks on industrial companies. Unlike other ransomware variants, the new malware does not permanently lock users’ files. Victims have been threatened with full disk deletion should they fail to pay the ransom, and it has been confirmed that the ransomware has … Read more

The private health information relating to more than 55,000 patients may have been compromised in during a ransomware attack against ABCD Pediatrics on the 6th of February 2017. Attackers managed to access ABCD Pediatrics’ servers following which Dharma ransomware was installed and consequently some PHI was encrypted. Dharma ransomware has been identified by experts as … Read more

Researchers at Cisco Talos have recently identified a new Powershell remote access Trojan. The memory-resident malware is almost impossible to detect because it doesn’t write files to the computer’s hard drive and uses a new way of communicating with its C2. The infection is spread via a malicious Microsoft Word document sent as an email … Read more

A new group of criminals have taken control of Petya ransomware and are using it in ransomware attacks against businesses without the participation or knowledge of those who created the ransomware. Those responsible for the new PetrWrap campaign developed Petya ransomware by adding a module to it that serves to modify the ransomware ‘on the … Read more

Numerous healthcare organization employ HTTPS inspection tools in order to monitor HTTPS connections for any malware which may be present. HTTPS inspection tools are used to decrypt secure HTTPS network traffic and verify content prior to re-encrypting traffic. The purpose of HTTPS inspection tools is to enhance security, however the Department of Health and Human … Read more

A Sucuri researcher has recently discovered a new zero day WordPress vulnerability in the WordPress REST API. The vulnerability permits content injection and the escalation of user privileges. Should it be exploited, an unauthenticated user might be able to make modifications to any content found on the WordPress sites, which could include the addition of … Read more

A Netgear router vulnerability which remained unpatched for approximately 3 months was recently made public, a disclosure which placers users at risk of their devices being exploited by hackers. The threat is so large that US-CERT issued a strong warning to every user of the devices urging them them to their Netgear routers immediately. The … Read more

The payment of a $21,000 ransom to attackers following the Madison County ransomware attack that disabled a large number of the county’s computer systems in November 2016 was necessitated as a viable backup of the data concerned did not exist. In accordance with the County’s insurance company’s advice, the ransom was paid. It has been confirmed that … Read more

The biggest healthcare W-2 phishing scam 2017 thus far has been reported by American Senior Communities of Indiana. Although a number of organizations have already reported being tricked by phishing emails this tax season, this was by a long way the largest healthcare W-2 phishing scam, affecting over 17,000 of the organization’s employees. To date, … Read more

A pair of recently recognised critical vulnerabilities to the Joomla content management system are presently being utilised by hackers in a series of attacks on Joomla websites. Although the two vulnerabilities were not thought to have been exploited when first discovered, that quickly proved to be untrue. In the aftermath of release of any Joomla … Read more

Google has promised that it will take action against websites that are used repeatedly to serve malware, unwanted software, or are used to ‘phishing’ attacks. As soon as a website has been confirmed as a repeat offender, the Google Chrome browser will automatically issue an alert to visitors, warning them that the site is known … Read more

An app that was available to members of the public for download from the Google Play store has been discovered to have contained ransomware. In recent days, Google acted to remove the ransomware app from its Play Store, however it remains unknown how many individuals had already been infected. The malicious app concerned is named … Read more

According to a recent warning issued by the FBI, Healthcare organizations may be placing the protected health information of their patients in jeopardy by using anonymous FTP servers. Cybercriminals are profiting from the lack of protection on FTP servers to access patients’ protected health information (PHI). Anonymous FTP servers enable unauthorised individuals to access data … Read more

Although disk-wiping malware has existed for several years, a new version of an older malware variant has now been detected. This malware is reportedly being used to attack companies which have implemented a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). As opposed to every employee using his or her own computer, in a virtual desktop infrastructure each one … Read more

The risk of malware and ransomware infections can be reduced by training staff to avoid opening file attachments received from unfamiliar email accounts. Despite this being common practice, a well known cybercriminal group has recently been increasing the number of infections by telephoning hotels and restaurants to ask staff to open emails with infected attachments. … Read more

Researchers from the Danish telecom firm TDC have claimed that attackers have been using ICMP ping floods to carry out Denial of Service (DoS) attacks capable of removing enterprise firewalls. As opposed to standard DDoS attacks, the attacker does not have to use a multitude of hacked devices to accomplish the attack. It can actually … Read more

Cisco Talos and Apache have issued warnings to their users following the revelation of a new Apache Struts vulnerability that has been actively exploited in recent days. Cisco Talos researchers recently identified the ‘zero-day’ vulnerability in the Java application framework was recently, and it has been confirmed that a constant stream of attacks have been … Read more

A new type of Android malware, known as ‘Gooligan’ has been discovered by the Israeli based company CheckPoint which specialises in cybersecurity. According to initial reports it is already spreading at a rate which has alarmed experts. A cyber attacker can potentially gain access to Google accounts and the data stored in Gmail, Google Drive, … Read more