Cyber Security

Pulaski County Public Schools (PCPS) announced today that it has been the victim of a cyberattack. The attack was detected on Sunday, and PCPS immediately contacted cybersecurity experts to investigate. The investigation determined that the attack involved ransomware, a type of malware that encrypts files and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them. PCPS is...

A major outage at Optus, Australia's second-largest telecommunications provider, plunged the country into chaos on Wednesday, leaving millions without internet or phone service for most of the day. The outage, which began around 4:00 AM local time (17:00 GMT on Tuesday), affected an estimated 10 million Australians, disrupting transportation, banking, and healthcare services. The outage...

A closer look at the small business landscape in North Carolina reveals that an overwhelming 99.6% of businesses in the state qualify as small businesses, employing 499 individuals or fewer. These small businesses collectively make up a significant portion of the workforce in North Carolina, accounting for approximately 44.4% of all employment in the...

A recent study by a team of researchers from the University of Sheffield has shed light on the vulnerabilities present in popular artificial intelligence applications, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, and their potential to produce harmful Structured Query Language (SQL) commands. The findings reveal that these AI applications can be manipulated to create malicious code, making...

State-sponsored threat actors from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have recently been discovered targeting blockchain engineers associated with an undisclosed cryptocurrency exchange platform. The attacks, originating from April 2023, involve the use of a previously unseen macOS malware known as KANDYKORN, and have raised concerns within the cybersecurity community. Elastic Security Labs, an...

An international coalition is making strides towards thwarting ransomware attackers and preventing them from receiving payments. The effort is being led by the Counter-Ransomware Initiative, which is finalizing a groundbreaking policy statement, declaring that member governments will not pay ransoms, according to Anne Neuberger, the White House deputy national security adviser for cyber and...

An ongoing cyber espionage campaign, believed to be linked to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), has been detected targeting financial, government, military, and telecommunications sectors across the Middle East for at least a year. Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point, in collaboration with Sygnia, has uncovered and tracked this operation, identifying the threat...

A new report by Allianz Commercial has sounded the alarm on a significant resurgence of ransomware and extortion claims in 2023. Following two years of relatively stable but high-loss activity, the evolving cyber threat landscape is witnessing hackers increasingly target both IT and physical supply chains, while dark web groups launch mass cyber-attacks and...

As the academic year kicks off, school leaders in the United Kingdom (UK) are grappling with an unsettling reality—the increasing threat of cyber-attacks. Recent incidents targeting educational institutions, including Highgate Wood School, St Augustine Academy, and Thomas Hardye School, underscore the urgency for schools to bolster their cybersecurity defenses. In this article, we delve...

In the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, a remarkable development has emerged, one that blurs the lines between conventional warfare and the virtual battleground. Ukraine's recently formed "IT army" has taken center stage, wielding the power of cyber-attacks and data theft against Russian government entities and high-profile targets, including energy giant Gazprom. This...

Ransomware attacks on educational institutions in the United States have witnessed a troubling surge over the past year, presenting an escalating threat to both public and private school districts nationwide, as revealed in a recent report by S&P Global Ratings. This ominous trend has raised concerns regarding the security and stability of our education...

Three unpatched high-severity security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the NGINX Ingress controller for Kubernetes. These vulnerabilities could potentially be exploited by threat actors to steal secret credentials from the cluster. The vulnerabilities are as follows: CVE-2022-4886 (CVSS score: 8.8): Ingress-nginx path sanitization can be bypassed to obtain credentials of the Ingress-nginx controller. CVE-2023-5043 (CVSS...

All major political groups are anticipated to back amendments mandating European Parliament approval for the adoption of cybersecurity certification schemes. This move comes in response to the politicization of the European Cloud Services scheme, where contentious sovereignty requirements were proposed by the European Commission, potentially excluding non-European providers from significant portions of the EU...

A recent study has revealed that approximately 50 percent of organizations are still in the process of acquiring the necessary skill sets to effectively implement the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023, according to 'The India Data Protection Readiness Report' by EY India, released on Sunday. The report highlights a significant gap in...

In 2022, the United States witnessed a substantial increase in data breach incidents, totaling 1,802 cases, impacting over 422 million individuals. These breaches involve the illegal access, copying, and theft of sensitive and confidential data, affecting hardworking individuals, families, as well as businesses of all sizes. While high-profile breaches like the recent attack on MGM...