Industry Intel

Girl Scouts and OpenText empower future leaders of tomorrow with cyber resilience

The transition to a digital-first world enables us to connect, work and live in a realm where information is available at our fingertips. The children of today will be working in an environment of tomorrow that is shaped by hyperconnectivity. Operating in this...

World Backup Day reminds us all just how precious our data is

Think of all the important files sitting on your computer right now. If your computer crashed tomorrow, would you be able to retrieve your important files? Would your business suffer as a result? As more and more of our daily activities incorporate digital and online...

3 Reasons We Forget Small & Midsized Businesses are Major Targets for Ransomware

The ransomware attacks that make headlines and steer conversations among cybersecurity professionals usually involve major ransoms, huge corporations and notorious hacking groups. Kia Motors, Accenture, Acer, JBS…these companies were some of the largest to be...

How Ransomware Sneaks In

Ransomware has officially made the mainstream. Dramatic headlines announce the latest attacks and news outlets highlight the staggeringly high ransoms businesses pay to retrieve their stolen data. And it’s no wonder why – ransomware attacks are on the rise and the...

An MSP and SMB guide to disaster preparation, recovery and remediation

Introduction It’s important for a business to be prepared with an exercised business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan plan before its hit with ransomware so that it can resume operations as quickly as possible. Key steps and solutions should be followed...

Podcast: Cyber resilience in a remote work world

The global pandemic that began to send us packing from our offices in March of last year upended our established way of working overnight. We’re still feeling the effects. Many office workers have yet to return to the office in the volumes they worked in pre-pandemic....

5 Tips to get Better Efficacy out of Your IT Security Stack

If you’re an admin, service provider, security executive, or are otherwise affiliated with the world of IT solutions, then you know that one of the biggest challenges to overcome is efficacy. Especially in terms of cybersecurity, efficacy is something of an amorphous...

How Cryptocurrency and Cybercrime Trends Influence One Another

Typically, when cryptocurrency values change, one would expect to see changes in crypto-related cybercrime. In particular, trends in Bitcoin values tend to be the bellwether you can use to predict how other currencies’ values will shift, and there are usually...

Cyber News Rundown: Paradise Ransomware

Mar 13, 2020 | Industry Intel

Paradise Ransomware Spreading Through Unusual Attachments

While Paradise ransomware isn’t new to the scene, the latest methods it’s using to spread are a bit surprising. Though it sticks to using email for transmission, it now offers up an IQY attachment instead of a typical word document or excel spreadsheet. These can make a quick connection to a malicious URL prompting the download of the actual ransomware payload. What makes these especially dangerous is that they appear to be simple text files with no internal malicious code, just commands for retrieving it, so it isn’t typically picked up by most security services.

Entercom Data Breach

One of the world’s largest radio broadcasters, Entercom, recently revealed it had fallen victim to a data breach. It was initiated through a third-party service that stored login credentials for Radio.com users and could affect up to 170 million customers. This breach would be the third security incident targeting Entercom in just the last six months. The company has already fallen victim to two separate cyberattacks that caused their systems to be disrupted. Entercom has since implemented several additional security measures and prompted all users to change their passwords, especially if reused on other sites.

Western Union Begins Fraud Payback

Western Union has started paying back roughly $153 million to victims of fraudulent transactions processed by the firm’s payment systems. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, several employees and owners of Western Union locations were involved with allowing these fraudulent payments to be made and failing to properly discipline those individuals. The payback terms have started with 109,000 victims worldwide and will eventually total $586 million in reimbursements.

Whisper App Exposes User Data and Messages

The anonymous messaging app Whisper was recently revealed to own an unsecured database containing a large amount of personal customer records. Two independent researchers first discovered the database, containing over 900 million records and reaching back nearly eight years, and quickly contacted Whisper. The company then locked down the unrestricted access. Though financial or personally identifiable information were not included in the database, the app does track location data that could be used to narrow down a specific user’s location to a home or place of work.

Online Shopper Records Leaked

Up to 8 million sales records were discovered in an unsecured MongoDB database that has been misconfigured for an undetermined amount of time. The researcher who found the database quickly contacted the third-party servicing company that managed the database and it was secured five days later. The database contained roughly four million records pertaining to Amazon UK and eBay alone, comprised mainly of payment and contact information for online shoppers.

Cyber News Rundown: Estée Lauder Data Exposed

Feb 14, 2020 | Industry Intel

Estée Lauder Leaves Massive Database Unprotected

Earlier this week researchers discovered an unsecured database containing over 440 million records belonging to Estee Lauder, a major make-up manufacturer. Though the company has confirmed that no customer data was stored in that database, they are still unsure on how long it was left exposed for and it did contain sensitive company information. Estée Lauder was able to properly secure the database on the same day the initial researcher contacted them.

SoundCloud Account Vulnerabilities Fixed

Researchers have contacted SoundCloud about vulnerabilities in their platform API that could allow attackers to illicitly access user accounts. While officials quickly resolved the security flaws, two additional API flaws had the potential to initiate DDoS attacks or create fraudulent song statistics by exploiting a specific set of track IDs. Attackers would have been able to exploit the user ID authentication to test previously leaked username/password combinations in hopes some victims were using the same credentials on multiple sites.

Danish Data Leak Exposes 1.3 Million Citizens

Over a period of five years from 2015 to 2020, a bug in the country’s tax systems has leaked sensitive ID numbers for nearly 1.3 million Danish citizens. The bug itself displayed the user’s ID number in the URL after the user made changes in their tax portal, which were then analyzed by both Google and Adobe. Fortunately, no additional tax or other personal information was divulged in the leak, which the government was quick to resolve.

Study Reveals Top Brands Used in Phishing Campaigns

After gathering data from nearly 600 million email boxes over the last year, researchers once again determined that PayPal was the most impersonated company for phishing attacks in 2019. The data also revealed that phishing campaigns disguised as PayPal were using an average of 124 unique URLs daily to propagate the malicious content. Many other top companies used in phishing campaigns in 2019 were financial institutions, as they are easy troves of consumer information.

Australia Debates Retention Period for Consumer Data

The Australian government has just begun debating changes to their current data retention period, which is currently two years (or significantly longer than any comparable nation’s policy). Storing data for that length of time can be extremely dangerous, especially given the rise in data breaches in recent years. While Australia believes it’s two-year limit to be a good balance, there is currently no management of who actually has access to the data and several amendments are introduced to improve the privacy of Australian citizens.

Cyber News Rundown: Emotet Targets Tax Season

Feb 7, 2020 | Industry Intel

Tax Season Brings Emotet to the Front

As Americans prepare for tax season, Emotet authors have started a new campaign that imitates a W-9 tax form requested by the target. As with most malicious phishing, an attached document asks users to enable macros when viewing the files. This campaign can be particularly dangerous, because many people don’t spend much time looking at W-9s since they are only sent to contractors and clients who often quickly sign and return them. Emotet infections can further harm companies by downloading additional info-stealing malware and using infected machines to distribute spam campaigns.

Australian Logistics Company Faces Delays After Ransomware Attack

Toll Group, a major transportation company in Australia, fell victim to a ransomware attack this week that forced them to take several vital systems offline. Due to company cybersecurity policies, no customer data was accessed and the damage was minimized by a quick response from their team. While many customers have been able to conduct business as normal, some are still experiencing issues as they wait for all of Toll Group’s systems to return to normal operation.

Cryptomining Botnet Found on DoD Systems

A bug bounty hunter recently found an active cryptocurrency mining botnet hidden within systems belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The bug was also being used as a silent backdoor for additional malware execution. Unfortunately, the misconfigured server had already been illicitly accessed and the attackers had installed a cryptominer to obtain Monero coins, but officials for the DoD worked quickly to secure the system before further damage could be inflicted.

Maze Ransomware Targets Multiple French Industries

At least five French law firms and a construction corporation have fallen victim to the Maze ransomware variant, which is known for quickly exfiltrating sensitive information. Maze authors also made an announcement that they will begin releasing the stolen data if the victims refuse to pay the ransom. Though only two of the law firms have had their data posted so far, the remaining firms are expected to be exposed if the ransom is not paid.

British Charity Falls for Impersonation Scam

The British housing charity Red Kite recently fell victim of an impersonation scam in which nearly $1 million was redirected to a scammer’s account. By disguising their domain and illicitly accessing previous Red Kite email threads, the attackers were able to impersonate a contracting company without payment system safeguards stopping the payment or notifying victims that anything was abnormal until it was too late.

Cyber News Rundown: Magecart Hackers Arrested

Jan 31, 2020 | Industry Intel

Indonesian Magecart Hackers Arrested

At least three individuals were arrested in connection to the infamous Magecart information stealing malware. Thanks to the combined efforts of several international law enforcement agencies, numerous servers issuing commands to awaiting Magecart scripts have been taken down in both Indonesia and Singapore. While these are not the only individuals who have profited from the Magecart code, they are the first to be identified and brought to justice.

German City Suffers Cyberattack

The City of Potsdam, Germany, is recovering from a cyberattack that took down parts of its administration systems. Fortunately, the systems were being actively monitored and were quickly taken offline to prevent data from being removed. It seems, after further investigation, that the servers were not fully patched with the latest updates. This could have allowed the attackers to move and execute malware freely.

Job Listings Used to Commit Fraud

A new wave of data theft has hit the job hunting crowd, making life harder for people looking to be hired. Cybercriminals have been creating phony sites with job listings for the purpose of absconding with the information one would normally provide an employer after accepting an offer. Though these types of scams have been executed in the past, they tend to reappear occasionally due to their continued success.

UK Court Freezes Bitcoin Wallet

After falling victim to a ransomware attack that shut down more than 1,000 computers, a Canadian insurance company took advantage of their cybersecurity policy to pay out a nearly $1 million ransom. By working with a cyber analysis firm, the company was able to track their ransom payment through the blockchain to a final wallet, which was then frozen by the currency exchange to stop further transactions and to identify the owners of the wallet. Though this may sound positive for the victims, they may be the target of additional negative repercussions like having their stolen data published or being attacked again.

South Carolina Water Company Shutdown

The Greenville Water service in South Carolina was hit with a cyberattack that took down all their systems for around the last week. As they continue to restore systems to proper function, officials have stated that no customer data was accessed, nor is any payment card data actually stored there. Fortunately, Greenville Water was able to return to normal functions within a week and informed customers that late fees would not be issued for payments made during the outage.

Cyber News Rundown: Cannabis User Data Breach

Jan 23, 2020 | Industry Intel

Point-of-Sale Breach Targets U.S. Cannabis Industry

Late last month, researchers discovered a database owned by the company THSuite that appeared to contain information belonging to roughly 30,000 cannabis customers in the U.S. With no authentication, the researchers were able to find contact information as well as cannabis purchase receipts, including price and quantity, and even scanned copies of employee and government IDs. Though many of the records were for recreational users, medical patients were also involved in the breach, which could prompt additional investigations regarding HIPAA violations.

Ransomware Attack Shuts Down Florida Libraries

At least 600 computers belonging to the library system of Volusia County, Florida were taken offline after falling victim to an unconfirmed ransomware attack. While the libraries were able to get 50 computers back up and running, many of their core functionalities are still offline for the time being. Though officials still have not confirmed that ransomware was the cause of the shutdown, the attack is similar to ones targeting multiple California libraries less than a week earlier.

UK Government Allows Gambling Firms Access to Children’s Data

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was recently informed of a data breach that could affect nearly 28 million students in the UK. A gambling firm was apparently given access to a Department for Education database by a third-party vendor to complete age and ID verification, though it is unclear just how much information they were gathering. Both firms and the Department for Education have begun examining this breach to determine if this requires a full GDPR investigation.

International Law Enforcement Efforts Take Down Breach Dealer Site

In a combined effort from multiple law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe, two individuals who operated a site that sold login credentials from thousands of data breaches were arrested. Immediately following the arrests, the domain for WeLeakInfo was taken down and all related computers were seized by police, who then promptly put up an official press release and request for any additional info on the site or owners. WeLeakInfo, which boasted access to over 12 billion records, was originally hosted by a Canadian company, but was quick to employ Cloudflare to continue their nefarious dealings privately.

UPS Store Exposes Customer Data

Roughly 100 UPS Stores across the U.S. fell victim to a phishing attack that compromised sensitive customer information over the last four months. This incident stems from a malicious phishing attack that allowed some individuals to compromise store email accounts, which then allowed access to any documents that had been exchanged between the accounts and customers, from passports and IDs to financial info. Fortunately, UPS has already begun contacting affected customers and is offering two years of credit and identity monitoring.

Cyber News Rundown: Ryuk Uses Wake-on-Lan

Jan 17, 2020 | Industry Intel

Ryuk Adds New Features to Increase Devastation

The latest variant of the devastating Ryuk ransomware has been spotted with a new feature that allows it to turn on devices connected to the infected network. By taking advantage of Wake-on-Lan functionality, Ryuk can is able to mount additional remote devices to further its encryption protocols. While it’s possible to only allow such commands from an administrator’s machine, those are also the most likely to be compromised since they have the largest access base.

Learn more about ransomware infections and how to protect your data from cybercrime.

Bank Hackers Arrested Outside London

Over the course of six years, two individuals were able to successfully hack into many hundreds of bank and phone accounts with the intent to commit fraud. With the information they gathered, the two were also able to open new credit accounts and take out significant loans to purchase extra tech hardware. Officials for the London Metropolitan Police have made it known that cybercrime is taken just as seriously as any other crime.

Cryptominer Found After Multiple BSODs

Following a series of “blue screens of death” (BSoDs) on a medical company’s network, researchers identified a cryptominer that spread to more than 800 machines in just a couple months. The payload, a Monero miner, was hidden within a WAV file that was able to migrate undetected to various systems before executing the payload itself. To spread efficiently, the infection used the long-patched EternalBlue exploit that had not yet been updated on the network in question, thus leaving them fully susceptible to attack.

Consulting Firm Exposes Professional Data

Thousands of business professionals from the UK have potentially fallen victim to a data leak by the major consulting firm CHS. A server belonging to the company was found to contain passports, tax info, and other sensitive information that could have been archived from background checks within an unsecured Amazon Web Services bucket. While it is still unclear how long the data was available, researchers who discovered the leak quickly contacted both CERT-UK and Amazon directly, which promptly secured the server.

Western Australian Bank Breached

Over the last week officials for P&N Bank in Australia have been contacting their customers concerning a data breach that occurred during a server upgrade in early December. Though personally identifiable information has been exposed, it doesn’t appear that any accounts have been illicitly accessed and relates more to a customer’s contact information. A total number of affected customers has yet to be confirmed.

Cyber News Rundown: Snake Ransomware

Jan 10, 2020 | Industry Intel

Snake Ransomware Slithers Through Networks

A new ransomware variant, dubbed “Snake,” has been found using more sophisticated obfuscation while targeting entire networks, rather than only one machine. In addition, Snake will append any encrypted file extensions with five random characters following the filetype itself. Finally, the infection also modifies a specific file marker and replaces it with “EKANS,” or SNAKE spelled backwards. A free decryptor hasn’t been released yet, and the malware authors have specified that that encryption will be for entire networks only.

Minnesota Hospital Data Breach

Sensitive information belonging to nearly 50,000 patients of a Minnesota hospital has been illicitly accessed after multiple employee email addresses were compromised. While in most cases the information accessed was medical data and basic contact info, some patients may have also had their Social Security and driver’s license numbers compromised. Alomere Health has already contacted affected patients and begun providing credit and identity monitoring services.

Cyberattack Finally Cracks Las Vegas Security

For a city that is the target of roughly 280,000 cyber attacks every month, one attack was finally able to make it through Las Vegas security protocols. The attack appears to have stemmed from a malicious email but was quickly quarantined by city IT officials before it could do any critical damage. Earlier in 2019, Las Vegas officials proposed a measure to refuse payments to any cybersecurity threat actors.

Travelex Falls Victim to Sodinokibi Ransomware

On the first day of 2020, foreign travel service provider Travelex experienced a ransomware attack that used unsecured VPNs to infiltrate their systems. To make matters worse, a demand of $6 million has been placed on the company for the return of their data, or else the ransom will be doubled. Since this attack, a scoreboard has been created to track the six additional victims of the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware campaign.

ATM Skimmer Arrested in New York

At least one individual has been arrested in connection to an ATM skimming ring that has taken over $400,000 from banks in New York and surrounding states. From 2014 to 2016, this group installed card skimmers in an unidentified number of ATMs in order to steal card credentials and build up fraudulent charges. Eleven other people are connected with this incident and will also likely be charged.

Cyber News Rundown: US Coast Guard Hit with Ransomware

Jan 3, 2020 | Industry Intel

US Coast Guard Facility Hit with Ransomware

During the last week of December a US Coast Guard facility was the target of a Ryuk ransomware attack that shut down operations for over 30 hours. Though the Coast Guard has implemented multiple cybersecurity regulations in just the last six months or so, this attack broke through the weakest link in the security chain: human users. Ryuk typically spreads through an email phishing campaign that relies on the target clicking on a malicious link before spreading through a network.

Crypto-trading Platform Forces Password Reset After Possible Leak

Officials for Poloniex, a cryptocurrency trading platform, began pushing out forced password resets after a list of email addresses and passwords claiming to be from Poloniex accounts was discovered on Twitter. While the company was able to verify that many of the addresses found on the list weren’t linked to their site at all, they still opted to issue passwords reset for all clients. It’s still unclear where the initial list actually originated, but it was likely generated from a previous data leak and was being used on a new set of websites.

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2020: What Our Experts Have to Say

850 Wawa Stores Affected by Card-skimming

Nearly every one of Wawa’s 850 stores in the U.S. were found to be infected with a payment card-skimming malware for roughly eight months before the company discovered it. It appears Wawa only found out about the problem after Visa issued a warning about card fraud at gas pumps using less-secure magnetic strips. WaWa has since begun offering credit monitoring to anyone affected. In a statement, they mention skimming occurring from in-store transactions as well, so card chips would only be effective if the malware had been at the device level, rather than the transaction point.

Microsoft Takes Domains from North Korean Hackers

Microsoft recently retook control of 50 domains that were being used by North Korean hackers to launch cyberattacks. Following a successful lawsuit, Microsoft was able to use its extensive tracking data to shut down phishing sites that mainly targeted the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. The tech company is well-known for this tactic, having taken down 84 domains belonging to the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear and seizing almost 100 domains linked to Iranian spies.

Landry’s Suffers Payment Card Breach

One of the largest restaurant chain and property owners, Landry’s, recently disclosed that many of their locations were potentially affected by a payment card leak through their point-of-sale systems. The company discovered that from January through October of 2019, any number of their 600 locations had been exposed to a card-skimming malware if not processed through a main payment terminal that supported end-to-end encryption.

Cyber News Rundown: Honda Customer Data Leak

Dec 20, 2019 | Industry Intel

Honda Customer Database Exposed

Officials have been working over the past work to secure a database containing highly sensitive information belonging to more than 26,000 North American customers of the Honda motor company. The database in question was originally created in October and was only discovered on December 11. While no financial information was included in the leak, the records did contain names, VIN numbers, and service details for thousands of customers.

Boeing Contractor Data Leak

Nearly 6,000 defense contractors working for Boeing have had personal information leaked after a user error left an Amazon web service bucket publicly exposed. The 6,000 Boeing staff are only a small portion of the 50,000 individual records found on the leaked server, many of whom were involved in confidential projects for the Department of Defense. These types of data leaks are increasingly common as more users are not properly securing their servers or using any form of authentication.

Sextortion Email Campaign Shutdown

After months spent chasing them across Europe, authorities have arrested the authors responsible for the Nuclear Bot sextortion campaign. With their Nuclear Bot banking trojan, the team was able to compromise roughly 2,000 unique systems and use them to help distribute malicious emails. Though it’s been verified that the original authors are in custody, the source code for Nuclear Bot was made public in the hope no money would be made from its sale.

Emotet Sent from Phony German Authorities

A new email campaign has been disguising itself as several German government agencies and spreading the Emotet trojan, infecting multiple agency systems. This campaign differs from previous Emotet attacks by appearing as a reply from a prior email to appear more legitimate. To best defend against these attacks, users are strongly encouraged to check both the sender’s name and address as well as ensuring that macros aren’t enabled in their Office apps.

LifeLabs Pays Ransom After Cyber-Attack

Canadian testing company LifeLabs decided to pay a ransom after attackers illicitly accessed the sensitive information for all 15 million of its customers. Oddly, many of the records being found date back to 2016 or earlier and have yet to be identified on any illicit selling sites. LifeLabs has since contacted all affected customers and has begun offering identity monitoring services.

Cyber News Rundown: Zeppelin Ransomware

Dec 13, 2019 | Industry Intel

Zeppelin Ransomware Spreading

Over the last month, researchers have been monitoring the spread of a new ransomware variant, Zeppelin. This is the latest version of the ransomware-as-a-service that started life as VegaLocker/Buran and has differentiated itself by focusing on healthcare and IT organizations in both the U.S. and Europe. This variant is unique in that extensions are not appended, but rather a file marker called Zeppelin can be found when viewing encrypted files in a hex editor.

German ISP Faces Major GDPR Fine

The German internet service provider (ISP) 1&1 was recently fined for failing to protect the identity of customers who were reaching out to their call centers for support. While the incident took place in 2018, GDPR is clear about imposing fines for organizations that haven’t met security standards, even if retroactive changes were made. 1&1 is attempting to appeal the fines and has begun implementing a new authentication process for confirming customers’ identities over the phone.

Turkish Credit Card Dump

Nearly half a million payment cards belonging to Turkish residents were found in a data dump on a known illicit card selling site. The cards in question are both credit and debit cards and were issued by a variety of banking institutions across Turkey. This likely means that a mediating payment handler was the source of the leak, rather than a specific bank. Even more worrisome, the card dump contained full details on the cardholders, including expiration dates, CVVs, and names; everything a hacker would need to make fraudulent purchases or commit identify theft.

Pensacola Ransomware Attack

The city of Pensacola, Florida was a recent victim of a ransomware attack that stole, then encrypted their entire network before demanding $1 million ransom. In an unusual message, the authors of the Maze ransomware used explicitly stated that they had no connection to the recent shootings at the Pensacola Naval Base, nor were they targeting emergency services with their cyberattack.

Birth Certificate Data Leak

An unnamed organization that provides birth certificate services to U.S. citizens was contacted earlier this week in regard to a data leak of nearly 750,000 birth certificate applications. Within the applications was sensitive information for both the child applicant and their family members, which is highly sought after by scammers because it is relatively easy to open credit accounts for children with no prior credit history. Researchers are still waiting to hear back from the organization after finding this data dump in an unsecured Amazon Web Services bin.

Cyber News Rundown: ZeroCleare Malware

Dec 6, 2019 | Industry Intel

ZeroCleare Malware Wiping Systems

IBM researchers have been tracking the steady rise in ZeroCleare deployments throughout the last year, culminating in a significant rise in 2019. This malware is deployed on both 32 and 64-bit systems in highly targeted attacks, with the capability to completely wipe the system by exploiting the EldoS RawDisk driver (which was also used in prior targeted attacks). The malware itself appears to be spreading through TeamViewer sessions and, though the 32-bit variant seems to crash before wiping can begin, the 64-bit variant has the potential to cause devastating damage to the multi-national corporations being targeted.

FTC Scam Threatens Victims with Terrorism Charges

FTC officials recently made an announcement regarding scam letters purporting to be from the commission and the numerous complaints the letters have sparked from the public. Victims of the scam are told that, due to some suspicious activity, they will be personally and financially monitored as well as face possible charges for terrorism. These types of scams are fairly common and have been in use for many years, often targeting the elderly with greater success.

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Misreported Data Breach Costs Hospital Millions

Following an April 2017 complaint, the Office of Civil Rights has issued a fine of $2.175 million after discovering that Sentara Hospitals had distributed the private health information for 577 patients, but only reported eight affected. Moreover, it took over a year for the healthcare provider to take full responsibility for the breach and begin correcting their security policies for handling sensitive information. HIPAA violations are extremely time-sensitive and the slow response from Sentara staff could act as a lesson for other organizations to ensure similar events don’t reoccur.

Android Vulnerability Allows Hackers Easy Access

Researchers have identified a new Android exploit that allows hackers access to banking applications by quickly stealing login credentials after showing the victim a legitimate app icon, requesting additional permissions, and then sending the user to their expected app. Even more worrisome, this vulnerability exists within all current versions of AndroidOS and, while not found on the Google Play Store, some illicit downloaders were distributing it.

Smith & Wesson Hit by Magecart

In the days leading up to Black Friday, one of the largest retail shopping days of the year, malicious skimming code was placed onto the computer systems and, subsequently, the website of Smith & Wesson. In a slight break from the normal Magecart tactics, they attackers were masquerading as a security vendor to make their campaign less visible. The card-skimming code was initially placed onto the website on November 27 and was still active through December 2.

Cyber News Rundown: Shade Ransomware Most Distributed Variant

Nov 22, 2019 | Industry Intel

Shade Ransomware Takes Crown as Most Distributed Variant

Over the course of 2019, one ransomware variant, known as Shade, has taken over 50 percent of market share for ransomware delivered via email. Otherwise known as Troldesh, this variant receives regular updates to further improve it’s encrypting and methods of generating additional revenue from both cryptomining and improving traffic to sites that run ads. In just the first half of 2019, attacks using Troldesh dramatically rose from 1,100 to well over 6,000 by the second calendar quarter.

PayMyTab Leaves Customer Data Exposed

For more than a year sensitive customer data belonging to users of the mobile payment app PayMyTab has been publicly exposed in an online database using no security protocols. Even after being contacted multiple times regarding the data breach, the company has yet to fully secure customer data and may have to take drastic measures to fully secure their data storage after allowing virtually unlimited access to anyone with an interest in personal data.

Credentials Dump for Major Service Sites

Login credentials for two highly-trafficked websites were discovered in a data dump earlier this week. One dump belonged to GateHub, a cryptocurrency wallet with potentially up to 1.4 million user credentials stolen, including not only usernames and passwords, but also wallet hashes and keys used for two-factor authentication. The second dump contained information on 800,000 users of EpicBot, a RuneScape bot used to automate tasks in the skill-centric MMORPG. While both dumps appeared on dark web marketplaces on the same day, it also seems coincidental that both sites use bcrypt hashing for passwords, which should make them exceedingly difficult to crack assuming it was set up properly.

Louisiana Government Systems Hit with Ransomware

Multiple Louisiana state service sites were taken offline early Monday morning following a ransomware attack that affected mostly transportation services. All 79 of the state’s DMV locations were forced to close until systems were returned to normal, as they were unable to access DOT services to assist clients. While it is still unclear what variant of ransomware was used, the state of Louisiana did have a cybersecurity team in place to stop any further spread of the infection.

Magecart Targets Macy’s Online

Nearly a week after the initial breach, Macy’s officials noticed some unauthorized access between their main website and an undisclosed third-party site. The breach itself appears to have compromised payment card data for any customers who input their credentials during the first couple weeks of October. Macy’s has since removed the illicitly added code from their sites as well as contacted both payment card providers and affected customers regarding the breach.