News

The attack early in the morning of October 29 has taken all of the school district's systems offline. A ransomware attack against Las Cruces, New Mexico's public school system has shut down computers and networks across the district. School district IT teams reportedly reacted quickly, shutting down all computers immediately after detecting the attack at 0700 on October 29. According to the district, no student data is believed to have been compromised. Source: Dark Reading

In a report for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday, Bed Bath & Beyond retailer disclosed that an unauthorized party obtained login information for some of its customers. Details about the breach are scarce but the company says that it affected a small number of online accounts. Source: Bleeping Computer

Attackers have targeted precision companies in Italy with phishing that is difficult to spot. The final payload is a fileless trojan that harvests credentials. The campaign used a legitimate-looking Microsoft Excel spreadsheet embedded with exploit code that moves silently to infect the computer. Source: Bleeping Computer

There has been a surge in activity surrounding the Xhelper Android ad dropper, with more than 45,000 devices being infected since the malware made its first appearance six months ago. In the past month an average of 131 devices were infected each day, with about 2,400 devices persistently infected throughout the month. The malware mostly hits users in India, the U.S. and Russia. Source: SC Magazine

Messaging app WhatsApp has said Indian journalists and activists are among some 1,400 people worldwide who were targeted with Israeli-made spyware. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO Group on Wednesday, alleging it was behind cyber-attacks that infected devices in April and May. The Israeli company, which makes software for surveillance, has strongly disputed the allegations. India has 400 million WhatsApp users, making the country its biggest market. Source: BBC

by Budgie Dhanda, CEO of Qufaro & Adrian Davis, Visiting Professor at University of Sunderland The lack of trained professionals in the cybersecurity industry is a problem that official statistics predict will only get worse with time. In fact, the 2017 ISC2 Global Information Security Workforce Study predicted a global 1.8M shortfall by 2022. The threats that organisations need to brace for are in continuous evolution, and more than ever is there a need for a...

The Maze Ransomware is conducting a new spam campaign that targets Italian users by pretending to be the country's Tax and Revenue Agency. The Maze Ransomware is not a new infection, but within the past month it has been picking up steam with new campaigns, partnering with exploit kits, and inserting playful comments targeting researchers in their executables. Source: Bleeping Computer

A ransomware attack hitting Las Cruces Public Schools forced the district to shut down the entire computer system to contain the infection. Exchanging information with schools is impaired as email and other forms of computer-based communication is no longer possible at this moment. Source: Bleeping Computer

Data breaches hitting massive entities like Equifax, Facebook and Target grab headlines, but the impact on small businesses is just as severe with attacks causing bankruptcy or even forcing a firm to shutter its doors. A report issued by the National Cyber Security Alliance, based on a Zogby Analytics survey of 1,008 small businesses with up to 500 employees, found that after suffering a data breach 10 percent went out of business, 25 percent had to file...

Italian global banking and financial services company UniCredit S.p.A. yesterday disclosed a data breach incident involving a file containing roughly 3 million records. The file was generated in 2015, which suggests that customers who created accounts in 2016 and beyond are likely safe. Affected information consisted of customers’ names, cities, telephone numbers and emails. Source: SC Magazine