News

Launched in June 2020, Fonix Ransomware (AKA Xinof and FonixCrypter) has begun to target an increased number of people. Just last Friday a Fonix ransomware Admin tweeted that they have 'shut down the ransomware operation'. They also released the master decryption key. Fortunately, Kaspersky, multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, also released a decryptor, which is free to download. All businesses have to do is use an updated version of Kaspersky's RakhniDecryptor, download the decryptor to...

Q4 of 2020 saw a decline in ransomware victims paying to recover their data. This is a result of being able to recover their data from backups, even if hackers threaten to leak the data before encryption. However, Coveware has picked up on a 'more insidious phenomenon' in which data is being destroyed during the attack. Companies have found this leaves them no option to recover the stolen data, even if they were to pay...

Last week, it had been reported that an Oxfam Australia customer database containing 1.7 million customers' contact details and donor information was for sale on the dark web. Since this news came to light Oxfam Australia has launched an investigation into the data breach. Oxfam Australia is a charity which aims to alleviate poverty throughout Australia, Asia, Africa and the middle east, operating under the larger Oxfam umbrella. Last week an Oxfam Australia database was...

Critical vulnerabilities have been found in one of Realtek's most popular wifi modules, the Realtek RTL8195A wifi module. Analysis by the IoT security firm Vdoo, discovered that six major vulnerabilities exist in the wifi module. Realteks's RTL8195A module is a low-powered, compact Wi-Fi module used for embedded devices. The module has supported software from a number of large vendors such as Google, Samsung, and Amazon. Once an attacker has exploited the vulnerability in the module, they...

On Tuesday, Singapore passed the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Amendment) Bill, under a Certificate of Urgency. This allows the government to introduce new legislations they deem to be urgent. This bill was passed as a result of public discontent after it was revealed that the police were able to access the country's Trace Together contact tracing app for their criminal investigations. This contradicted the government's previous statements, that the information on the app would only be...

The 1.4 million reports of identity theft throughout 2020 highlights the need for awareness surrounding this crime. 2020's surge in identity theft can actually be attributed to the nationwide dip in employment. Reportedly, cyber criminals targeted government funds meant for individuals and small businesses that were hard hit financially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. From February 1- February 5 the FTC and its partners will co-host a series of free events. This will...

As the transition to remote working has forced many companies' hands for increased or faster adoption of cloud services, One Identity has announced the availability of its new software-as-a-service (SaaS) identity governance and administration (IGA) and privileged access management (PAM) solutions. Based on the One Identity Security Platform and designed with the full IGA and PAM capabilities of its industry-leading solutions, the new SaaS offerings allow organisations to implement a Zero Trust model and are...

The i newspaper speculated that Foxtons Group has experienced a data breach, with thousands of customers' personal and financial data leaked on the dark web. The exclusive news for i claims that Foxtons did not take action when they first found out in January that their customers' data was available on the dark web following a cyberattack a number of months earlier, thought to be in October. Since the claims, Foxtons have said that only...

The Office of the Washington State Auditor (SAO) has experienced a data breach which has resulted in the exposure of 1.6 million employment claims, and the sensitive personal information that they contain. The Washington SAO revealed that a threat actor had exploited a vulnerability in Accellion, a secure file transfer service that helps organisations share sensitive documents with outside users in a secure way. The breach has unfortunately exposed data files from the Employment Security...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said today that the number of identity theft reports has doubled during 2020 when compared to 2019, reaching a record 1.4 million reports within a single year. The FTC claimed that: "After the government expanded unemployment benefits to people left jobless by the pandemic, cybercriminals filed unemployment claims using other people’s personal information." Throughout 2020, the FTC received 394,280 reports of government benefit fraud attempts, while in 2019 this number...