News

Google has removed today an Android app from the official Play Store that was developed by the Iranian government to test and keep track of COVID-19 (coronavirus) infections. Before being removed from the Play Store, controversy surrounded the app, and several users accused the Iranian government of using the COVID-19 scare to trick citizens into installing the app and then collecting phone numbers and real-time geo-location data. Source: ZD Net

  Hackers of "Russian" origin targeted the city and county governments of Durham, N.C., over the weekend, hampering computer and communications networks with ransomware, according to local officials. The attack, which used the infamous Ryuk malware strain typically spread through malicious attachments in phishing emails, was carried out late Friday by a Russian hacking group, according to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations, one of the agencies looking into the attack. Source: Government Technology

  The global pandemic of Coronavirus, and the concerns of people traveling and gathering indoors at large events, has hit the cybersecurity events calendar with events now being canceled. Initially Mobile World Congress was canceled, after being due to take place in late February, with a statement claiming that this was due to “the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concerns and other circumstances,” whilst San Francisco’s RSA Conference did go ahead despite exhibitors...

  A newly discovered malware campaign suggests that hackers have themselves become the targets of other hackers, who are infecting and repackaging popular hacking tools with malware. Cybereason’s Amit Serper found that the attackers in this years-long campaign are taking existing hacking tools — some of which are designed to exfiltrate data from a database through to cracks and product key generators that unlock full versions of trial software — and injecting a powerful remote-access...

Ransomware attacks against healthcare providers increased a whopping 350 percent during the last quarter of 2019 with the rapid pace of attacks already continuing throughout 2020, according to a new report from Corvus. Ransomware attacks dominated healthcare headlines during the later part of 2019 with attacks on IT vendors disrupting services on hundreds of dental and nursing facilities, while a number of hospitals, health systems, and other covered entities reported business disruptions from these targeted...

 Multiple government-backed hacking groups are exploiting a recently-patched vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange email servers. The exploitation attempts were first spotted by UK cyber-security firm Volexity on Friday and confirmed today to ZDNet by a source in the DOD. Source: ZD Net

  Telecommunications company T-Mobile has revealed that it experienced a security breach which has potentially impacted the account information of both employees and customers. In a notice posted on T-Mobile’s official website, the company explained that its cybersecurity team had recently identified and stopped a cyberattack against T-Mobile’s email vendor. The attack gave unauthorized access to certain employee email accounts – some of which had account information for customers and other employees. Source: Insurance Business...

  Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity solutions firm, today released its 2019 security roundup report. Ransomware continued to be a mainstay cyber threat last year. Overall, Trend Micro discovered a 10% increase in ransomware detections, despite a 57% decrease in the number of new ransomware families. The healthcare sector remained the most targeted industry, with more than 700 providers affected in 2019. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), malware attacks were one of the...

  Last month, a Dutch cyber-security firm ThreatFabric discovered the first-ever malware that could hack Google Authenticator application to extract one-time passcodes from a user's device by taking a screenshot of a user's screen with Google Authenticator open. The malware, named Cerberus, was under development when it was found and the ThreatFabric report did not find any real-world attacks using the malware. Now, a new research has looked into the malware's ability to access the...

  Australia’s information commissioner is suing Facebook over allegedly breaching the privacy of over 300,000 Australians caught up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In a case lodged in the federal court on Monday, the Australian information commissioner Angelene Falk has alleged Facebook committed serious and repeated interferences with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law because data collected by Facebook was passed onto the This is Your Digital Life app by Cambridge Analytica for political...