Cyber Bites

New Zealand's stock exchange ceased trading for several hours after being targeted by a suspected DDoS attack. This comes as the second attack in as many days disrupted operations, overwhelming digital infrastructures with a flood of internet traffic. Authorities announced that cash market trading was halted at 11:24 a.m. local time (2324 GMT) on Wednesday and resumed at 3:00 p.m. Trading in the final hour on Tuesday was also affected. Cybersecurity expert: Jamie Ahktar, CEO and...

Cybercriminals truly have no shame when it comes to their trade. No one is safe from these nefarious criminals when it comes to fraud and phishing attempts. An investigation from AtlasVPN published in CISOMag revealed that the U.S Military personnel have lost around $379.6 million (£290 million) to a range of fraudulent schemes from 2015 to June 30, 2020. According to the report, military staff have reported in excess of 680,000 complaints about fraud, identity...

It is well known that convenience breeds attack vectors in tech, and this is all the more true when considering cheap hardware. Unfortunately, the consequences of cheap devices often comes at the expense of security. Pre-installed Triada and xhelper malware have so far carried out a total of 19.2 million suspicious transactions from over 200,000 used or newly purchased phones. According to HackRead, and Upsteam's security platform, Chinese the manufacturer, Transsion manufactures low-cost Android smartphones...

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint release cautioning the public of a rise in 'vishing' or voice phishing attacks on organisations. The release indicates that this tactic was employed more prevalently from mid-July, and is the result of a "mass shift to working from home, resulting in increased use of corporate virtual private networks (VPNs) and elimination of in-person verification". Through vishing attacks,...

With attacks on organisations beginning earlier this month, DarkSide is the latest ransomware operation to emerge. Having announced themselves through a 'press release', as revealed in BleepingComputer, this ransomware has already garnered million-dollar payouts for their attacks. The threat actors have allegedly worked with other ransomware operations making millions of dollars. However, this new product was supposedly created to address their unmet needs. They wrote: "We are a new product on the market, but that...

For over 36 hours, the popular darknet market - Empire Market - has remained offline. This is according to a range of sources, not least the researcher and analyst Dark.fail who has been tweeting about this blackout. Moreover, this subject has been attracting significant attention in various online forums, including the Reddit threat r/darknet and its deep web equivalent, Dread. According to Dark.fail, the blackout is a result of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. In...

After suffering a ransomware attack the University of Utah has reportedly paid the ransom to hackers in an attempt to stop the criminals from exposing the encrypted student data. It is believed only 0.02% of data was taken from the servers and in a statement the university said: "After careful consideration, the university decided to work with its cyber insurance provider to pay a fee to the ransomware attacker. The statement continues: "This was done...

Research has found that since the beginning of lockdown, there has been an increase of 940% in the amount funded for UK cybersecurity start-ups. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, it is believed that £496m had been raised in the first half of 2020 – this eclipsed the total amount raised in 2019 which was £521m. Furthermore, the Cybersecurity: Building Business Resilience report claims that business spending on cybersecurity will double to £136bn this year. Given the high...

It was initially reported that the sensitive data on almost 2000 Instacart shoppers may have been exposed to third-party contractors who were providing IT and Security support. However, as information has come to light, Instacart has revealed that no customer information or profiles were accessed or impacted. Instacart released a press release which states the two employees from a third-party contractor "may have reviewed more shopper profiles than was necessary in their roles as support...

According to data obtained from a Freedom of Information inquiry conducted by the Lanop Accountancy Group, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is investigating 10,428 email, SMS, social media, and phone scams exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic. The highest rate of phishing scams occurred shortly after many countries went into lockdown in May with 5,152 reports to HMRC from members of the public and businesses, up from just 133 in March. Likewise, June saw a large...