Bitcoin Ransomware Attack Halts Major American City’s Government and Police

Bitcoin Ransomware Attack Halts Major American City’s Government and Police

Many government services in Atlanta, Georgia, a major metropolitan US city, were brought to a halt this week. Ransomware appeared on municipal computers, urging a payment of $51,000 in equivalent bitcoin, otherwise vital city functions would be shut down. The hackers made good on their threat, and services all over the city were impacted, including police. Into the weekend, the issue has not yet been resolved.

Pre-Installed Malware Found On 5 Million Popular Android Phones

Security researchers have discovered a massive continuously growing malware campaign that has already infected nearly 5 million mobile devices worldwide.

Dubbed RottenSys, the malware that disguised as a 'System Wi-Fi service' app came pre-installed on millions of brand new smartphones manufactured by Honor, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Samsung and GIONEE—added somewhere along the supply chain.

All these affected devices were shipped through Tian Pai, a Hangzhou-based mobile phone distributor, but researchers are not sure if the company has direct involvement in this campaign.

Germany Says Hackers Infiltrated Main Government Network

BERLIN — Hackers using highly sophisticated software penetrated the German government’s main data network, a system that was supposed to be particularly secure and is used by the chancellor’s office, ministries and the Parliament, government officials have said.

German news outlets, citing security sources, have widely blamed a Russian hacking group backed by the Russian government — either one called Snake, or another known as APT28, or Fancy Bear. But Berlin has not publicly said who was behind the attack.

Half Of The World’s Organizations Don’t Change Their Security Strategy, Even After Having Undergone An Attack

Around half of the do not put in enough effort to make the required changes to their security strategy even after being under a cyber-attack once.

This something stated by the CyberArk Global Advanced Threat Landscape Report 2018. In this report, 1300 IT security decision-makers were surveyed by the security vendor so that the present state of the enterprise security practices could be explored.