cybersecurity

By a Biometrica staffer A two-day global online virtual assets conference — co-organized by INTERPOL, Europol, and the Basel Institute on Governance — concluded with a call to action on better protecting the world’s financial systems by increasing multi-sector cooperation to strengthen...

By a Biometrica staffer Last week, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its Fall Semiannual Report to Congress, in which it was found that the efforts of the HHS in the 2021...

By Deepti Govind The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday, Nov. 8 recent actions taken against two foreign nationals charged with deploying Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware to attack businesses and government entities in the United States. On the same day, investing app Robinhood...

By a Biometrica staffer Casino news from the weekend includes reports of shootings and other crimes on properties, and a cyber crime warning. On Saturday, Nov. 6, a shooter fatally wounded two people before turning the gun on himself at Stateline Casino...

By a Biometrica staffer The Department of Justice (DOJ) is stepping up its firepower in the fight against the rapidly growing threat of ransomware attacks and cybercrime. This news comes as President Joe Biden's administration escalates its response to what it considers...

By a Biometrica staffer The United States has repeatedly faced various kinds of cyberattacks in recent times, with targets ranging from infrastructure to education, and mostly due to criminals wielding ransomware. At the Justice Department Criminal Division’s fifth Cybersecurity Roundtable, Assistant Attorney...

By a Biometrica staffer The federal government is systematically clamping down on lax cyberattack reporting by critical infrastructure companies in the private sector by tightening the standards that govern when they have to report to federal authorities that they have been the...

By a Biometrica staffer The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed the increased use of Conti ransomware in more than 400 attacks on U.S. and international organizations. In Conti attacks, malicious cyber actors...

By a Biometrica staffer On Sept. 8–9, U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco met remotely with G7 and EU Security Ministers, along with the Secretary General of INTERPOL, to discuss responding to the rapidly evolving...

By a Biometrica staffer President Joe Biden met with chief executive officers (CEOs) from several companies including Apple, Google, and JP Morgan Chase at the White House on Wednesday, Aug. 25, and urged them to play their part in stepping up cybersecurity...

By a Biometrica staffer Nearly half of all hospital executives said their systems were either forced or proactively shutdown in the last six months due to ransomware attacks, a study by IPSOS, sponsored by Philips and CyberMDX, published last week found. Of...

By a Biometrica staffer It seems like every day brings a new cyber incident that compromises the personal data of thousands, if not millions, of Americans. Last week, we wrote about how K–12 schools became the favored target for malicious cyber actors...

By a Biometrica staffer In another sign of how seriously President Joe Biden is taking a recent swell in the number of cyberattacks on American entities, on Wednesday, July 28 the White House released a national security memorandum on “improving cybersecurity for...

By a Biometrica staffer Experts and lawmakers across the country are sounding the alarm over what seems to be a cyber free-for-all on American businesses, infrastructure systems, and industries. President Joe Biden brought the subject up with the Russian government, and various...

By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this month, the Morgan County school system in West Virginia was hit by a cyberattack, presumably from a Russia-based group, in which the files and data seized are being held for a $70 million ransom. Though all...

By a Biometrica staffer In a cybersecurity advisory released on Monday, July 19, the National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Chinese state-sponsored cyber activity poses a major threat to U.S. and...

By a Biometrica staffer Multiple news sites began reporting on Tuesday, July 13, that REvil, the Russia-based group responsible for one of the largest ransomware attacks in history, had gone dark. There is no indication as of yet as to why the...

By Aara Ramesh In the late evening of Wednesday, June 23, John David McAfee, whose name is virtually synonymous with anti-virus software world over, was found unresponsive in his cell in a prison near Barcelona. He was being held there pending extradition...

By a Biometrica staffer It was in April that cybersecurity firm FireEye said on its Threat Research Blog that Chinese hackers suspected to be state-backed had exploited widely used networking devices for months to spy on dozens of high-value government, defense industry,...

By Aara Ramesh The fallout of last week’s ransomware cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline continues. On Wednesday, May 12, the Biden–Harris administration announced that it was implementing an all-of-government plan to combat fuel shortages resulting from the attack, with the president also issuing...

By Anand Vasu Last week, San Jose-based videoconferencing platform Zoom made a big announcement, which it labeled, “On Academic Freedom for our Higher Education Users.” The crux of the statement was that in the case of Zoom meetings and webinars hosted by...

By Anand Vasu The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned on April 16 that actors of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) were exploiting five known vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities listed by the FBI were: CVE-2018-13379 Fortinet FortiGate VPN CVE-2019-9670 Synacor Zimbra Collaboration Suite...

By Anand Vasu In their 2021 Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment, or SOCTA, Europol has identified the most serious threats posed by criminal organizations to individuals and businesses. The annual report, put together by Europol after analyzing data from law enforcement...

By Anand Vasu Three North Korean computer programmers were charged with participating in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to conduct a series of destructive cyberattacks, to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies.  Jon...

By a Biometrica staffer The chart shows data compromises in the U.S. for the past five years. There was a total of 7,398 publicly reported data breaches in this period. January 29th 2021 There’s been an interesting mix of information on 2020,...

By a Biometrica staffer Four federal agencies launched a coordinated effort to disrupt and deter Iranian malicious cyber activities targeting the US and the broader international community, the Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement. The DoJ, the Federal Bureau of...

By a Biometrica staffer Daniel McMahon, a resident of Florida, was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison for two separate racially-motivated crimes, the US Department of Justice said in a statement. The first of the two involve him threatening an...