California Law Makes Ransomware Use Illegal
It was nice to see the calendar turn over to 2017, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that on Jan. 1 a new law went into effect in California that outlaws the use of ransomware. The idea of needing a new law to make a form of hacking illegal may seem […]
70 Percent of Enterprise Ransomware Victims Paid Up, Data Shows
Ransomware gangs have been targeting businesses in the last few months, seeking bigger paydays than what they can extract from consumers. The plan has been highly successful, according to new data, which shows that 70 percent of businesses infected with ransomware have paid the ransom to get their data back. Researchers at IBM Security’s X-Force […]
Lieu Asks Congress to Examine Ransomware Problem
In the wake of the attack on San Francisco’s Muni transportation over the Thanksgiving weekend, a legislator from California is asking Congress to hold hearings on the ransomware problem and determine whether there are ways that the government can help address the issue in both government agencies and private businesses. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) sent a […]
Cerber Ransomware Seen Using Tor
Ransomware authors have adopted a number of new tactics recently to help avoid detection and stop takedown attempts, and the latest move by the gang behind the Cerber malware is the use of both Google redirection and the Tor network as evasion and obfuscation mechanisms. Researchers from Cisco’s Talos group have come across a new version […]
LockyDump Tool Helps Track Ransomware Configurations and Variants
The group behind the Locky ransomware has continued to update and improve the malware its distributing, and security researchers have been racing to keep up with the changes. The Talos research team at Cisco is part of that effort and the group has released a new tool that can dump all of the configuration information […]
Europol Warns That Ransomware is Biggest Online Threat
Ransomware has become the largest threat to consumers and businesses in the EU, according to a new threat report from Europol. The Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment points to variants such as Cryptowall, Cryptolocker, Teslacrypt, and CTB-Locker as representing the biggest security problem for European users. Ransomware is not a new threat, but it’s evolved and […]
The FBI Wants Your Ransomware Infection Story
As ransomware infections have spread through enterprise networks and infected millions of consumer devices, security experts and law enforcement officials have continued to search for answers. Now, the FBI is asking for victims who have been infected to come forward and detail their issues as a way for the agency to get a better understanding of […]
Cry Ransomware Pinpoints Victims Via Google Maps API
UPDATE: A new strain of ransomware known variously as Cry or CryLocker has emerged, and it’s using a few novel techniques, including communicating via UDP and using the Google Maps API to find victims’ locations. Researchers at the MalwareHunterTeam discovered the CryLocker ransomware and analyzed its behavior, with the help of Lawrence Abrams of Bleeping […]
Fake Ransomware Targets Redis Instances
UPDATE–Researchers have found that more than 18,000 instances of the Redis data store service are exposed to the Internet and open to complete compromise by remote attackers using simple commands. Duo Labs researchers set up a Redis honeypot and ran it for a month, looking for attack patterns and quickly found that attackers are actively […]