Ransomware incapacitates town government and affects the 911 service

Ransomware is one of the most significant threats to nowadays IT systems because it has an outstanding potential of generating untraceable revenue for the cyber criminals, over relatively short periods of time. No other type of malware can challenge its position in this respect. For the victims, ransomware comes with downtime, concern, the effort to […]

Ranstop blocks a CryptoLocker variant – Temasoft Lab Demo

Case subject – A CryptoLocker variant (Virustotal details) During this test, the TEMASOFT Research Lab Team used an isolated network to run a live ransomware. The payload is a variant of CryptoLocker that arrives as an executable which displays a standard “folder” icon, to trick users into clicking on it. Once clicked the executable asks […]

New ransomware attacks databases instead of files in large scale attack

Up until recently, ransomware was targeting document and image files, as they usually hold information that is needed by the victims. Most ransomware families had hard-coded detection of such files for the purpose of rendering them unusable.  Some ransomware families rely on volume encryption and would encrypt everything, after first having disabled the operating system […]

New ransomware distribution model: Infect two “friends”, unlock your files for free

In our previous blogs, we have looked at ways through which ransomware moves from being malware used by cyber criminals to extort money from victims to becoming a service that can be rented by anybody who wants to launch such attacks (read more here). This evolution allows ransomware service providers increase their revenues with least effort by […]

Should open source ransomware be banned?

Ransomware has been a growing concern since the last couple of years as the rate and cost of the related incidents saw major increases year over year. In response, NGOs, journalists, and security vendors started to educate the public in this respect. Various security companies invest effort and time in building solutions that would help […]

Ransomware-as-a-service expected to highly increase the number of cyber criminals

Until recently, ransomware attacks used to be carried out by highly skilled, well-motivated professional cyber attackers. The primary purpose was to obtain money in the form of ransom paid in bitcoins in untraceable transactions. But not anymore. Ransomware attacks became available to unskilled, malicious persons as well under the form of ransomware-as-a-service. Find out about […]

EHR adoption is slow for a reason – Ransomware attack forces three hospitals to cancel operations

Almost 3,000 patient appointments and several operations were canceled at three hospitals after a cyber attack involving a variant of Globe 2 ransomware, confirming once again the importance of the ransomware threat to Healthcare and, consequently, the justified reluctance to moving to EHR entirely. The hospitals impacted in this incident were part of the “Northern […]

GDPR significantly broadens the scope of data privacy requirements: are you in, or out?

The European Data Privacy Directive (Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament), is still the data privacy law in effect today in the European Union. This year, its replacement, the General Data Protection Regulation was adopted and will come into effect in 2018. GDPR will significantly broaden the scope of the data privacy requirements both regarding […]

Tesco Bank: Money stolen from customers’ accounts – thousands affected

Last weekend brought unpleasant surprises for the customers of Tesco Bank, the banking system of a major retailer in the UK. Following a stream of suspicious online transactions, some resulting in fraudulent withdrawals, the bank decided to cease online operations on Sunday. Why is this important for all of us? Because it was the first […]

FBI Urges Ransomware Victims to Report the Attacks

Healthcare organizations in the US fall under the scope of the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act” which enforces the requirement of reporting data breaches to the authorities, as well as take certain measures when such incidents occur. Each incident that has the potential to affect more than 500 persons must […]