Ransomware surged 102% year-on-year at the start of 2021 as it emerged that Colonial Pipeline agreed to pay $5 million to extorters after a crippling attack that began last week. The East Coast fuel pipeline was offline for five days after an attack struck last Thursday. However, contrary to initial reports that it refused to engage with the DarkSide threat group, the company actually paid within hours of the attack, two people familiar with the…

The FBI and Australian Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) warn of an ongoing Avaddon ransomware campaign targeting organizations worldwide. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) are warning of an ongoing Avaddon ransomware campaign targeting organizations worldwide in multiple industries, including government, finance, energy, manufacturing, and healthcare. The alert published by the ACSC provides a list of countries under attack which includes the US, UK, Germany, France, China, Italy Brazil,…

The current model for cybersecurity is broken. It consists of acquiring and deploying a lot of stand-alone tools, each with its own console, to analyze logs or traffic and detect anomalies that could be threats. In this model, it’s up to each security analyst to communicate with other analysts to determine whether each tool’s individual detection (each of which, by itself, may look benign), can correlate with other detections from other tools to reveal a…

The EO is designed to protect federal networks, foster information sharing between the government and private sector, and better respond to cyber incidents. But will it do the trick? Image: iStock/tupungato Alarmed by recent cyberattacks involving SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange and now Colonial Pipeline, the White House is taking action to try to shore up the cyber defenses of the United States. On Wednesday, President Biden signed an executive order that aims to strengthen the nation’s…

In the run up to Elon Musk hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live and the potential mention of Dogecoin on the show, scammers quickly capitalized on his appearance by promoting fake giveaways on Twitter and YouTube. Background On May 8, Elon Musk hosted NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Musk, who is a known supporter of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, teased the possibility that he might talk about the coin on the show, which led to much online speculation….