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Since 2014, the US government has suffered 822 breaches affecting nearly 175 million records. Based on the average cost per breached record (as reported by IBM each year), Comparitech estimate these breaches have cost government entities over $26 billion from 2014 to October 2022. In 2018 and 2019, the number of government breaches hit an all-time high with 116 and 118 breaches respectively. In 2020, breaches decreased to 107 before increasing again to 116 in...

It has been reported that a credential phishing attack targeted 22,000 students at national educational institutions through a campaign where hackers impersonated Instagram. The advisory was highlighted by security experts at Armorblox in an advisory released on the 17th November 2022. The advisory says: "The subject of this email encouraged victims to open the message... The goal of this subject was to induce a sense of urgency in the victims, making it seem an action...

With the 2022 Qatar World Cup now underway, Specops Software, a leading provider of password management and user authentication solutions, has today released its findings which observed the commonality of passwords that contained a likely player, country or World Cup-related term within a password. According to the research by Specops, which analysed over 800 million compromised passwords (a subset of a larger list included within its Breached Password Protection list of over 3 billion passwords), it was found ‘Kane’, possibly in reference to England forward Harry Kane, was third in the list of most popular names. In total, Kane appeared within breached password lists over 133,000 times. Digging deeper into...

Today, Comparitech released the results of its most recent study, looking at the true cost of ransomware on healthcare organisations around the world. It found that, since 2018, there have been 500 publicly-confirmed ransomware attacks; and this excludes those that may have not been disclosed at all. In total, these have crippled nearly 13,000 separate facilities and have impacted almost 49 million patient records. As such, Comparitech was able to estimate that these attacks exceed...

Obrela Security Industries recently launched their H1 2022 Digital Universe Study, which provides detailed insight into this year’s security and threat landscape. The results provide a ‘funnel’ view of real-time visibility data, and allow organisations to gain a better understanding of how threats are security are developing, and how they can better protect themselves.   To put together this report, Obrela collected and analysed 1 PBs of logs as well as 100,000 devices. In this time,...

Late Monday night, the popular file-hosting site Dropbox announced that it suffered a phishing attack. While no content, passwords or payment information was accessed, the hacker did "successfully access some of the code store in GitHub".  The company revealed that on October 14, they became aware that an attacker stole employee credentials, using them to access source code containing "primarily, API keys - used by Dropbox developers". While it's currently unclear what those API keys...

Earlier today it was reported that former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s personal phone was hacked earlier this year by suspected foreign agents, putting national security at risk, according to a new report on Sunday. Further to this, unnamed “security sources” told the Mail on Sunday that the incident was discovered during the Conservative Party leadership contest over the summer, causing Truss sleepless nights as she worried it may impact her chances of winning. In addition,...

Earlier today, the the world’s second largest copper producer has been hit by a cyber-attack which forced IT systems offline. Further to this, Hamburg-headquartered Aurubis revealed in a brief statement that the attack struck on Friday evening. “This was apparently part of a larger attack on the metals and mining industry,” it said. “As a result, numerous systems at Aurubis sites had to be shut down and disconnected from the internet as a preventive measure.” At...

As reported by Medibank, an Australian health insurance giant, every one of its customers had their personal information accessed by ransomware actors—which happened a few days after Medibank had downplayed the aftermath of a recent breach.  In a newly issued statement, Medibank admitted that the threat actors might have compromised all of its customers’ personal data, including that of international students and policyholders with Medibank business ahm. In other words, it’s possible that an estimated...

Reports have said that the Hive ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group has claimed responsibility for the cyber-attack against Tata Power disclosed by the company on October 14 and believed to have occurred on October 3. “The company has taken steps to retrieve and restore the systems. All critical operational systems are functioning,” the Mumbai-based company said at the time. Security researcher Rakesh Krishnan, has claimed that the leak has reportedly affected several of Tata’s 12 million customers and includes personally identifiable...