The German city of Munich recently hosted two security conferences which, for different reasons, could turn into globally significant reference points for years to come. The first, the annual high-level Munich Security Conference at which senior politicians discussed the crisis in Ukraine, made headlines across the world under the stirring beacon “unlearning helplessness.” Ironically, unlearning […]
Where do the billions of dollars extorted by ransomware criminals end up? Obviously, that cryptocurrency ends up in someone’s bank account before reappearing in the tills of luxury watch shops, sports car dealerships, and five-star resorts around the globe, as criminals spend the proceeds. To make that jump from the virtual to the physical, the […]
Europe just experienced a smaller but still alarming version of last May’s Colonial Pipeline attack in the U.S., as two large German fuel storage companies were taken offline by ransomware. The Jan. 29 attack targeted Oiltanking GmbH Group and Mabanaft GmbH & Co. KG Group, which operates fuel storage facilities as subsidiaries of the logistics […]
The world might just have experienced its first ever hacktivist ransomware attack. It came by way of a claim by campaigners opposed to the regime of President Lukashenko that they encrypted computers belonging to the Belarusian Railway service. The highly unusual attack is said to have happened on Jan. 24, when a group calling itself […]
In a rare piece of cybersecurity good news, in mid-January 2022 Russian security services announced the arrest in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Lipetsk of 14 alleged members of the world’s most notorious ransomware group, REvil (pronounced AreEvil). As cybercriminal busts go, this one confirmed every stereotype of the hacking underworld. Video released on the Russian […]
