John E. Dunn

John Dunn has been covering the IT industry for more than 30 years, specializing in cybersecurity, mobile, cloud, privacy, and networking. His work has appeared in numerous tech titles, including Computerworld, PC World, The Register, Which Computing, Forbes, and Naked Security. In 2003, he co-founded IDG's Techworld.
Recent posts by John E. Dunn

Ransomware offers up few absolute certainties, but one that has become a given is that extortion payments are demanded in Bitcoin. It hasn’t always been so. In the very early days of ransomware from around 2006, extortionists had to rely on traditional channels to receive payments such as credit cards (believe it or not) and […]

Leaking private data to embarrass victims into paying a ransom is probably the least organizations should expect from ransomware criminals in 2023. Looking back over the last decade, it’s surprising criminals didn’t think of this tactic earlier. Encrypting files is hugely inconvenient but at least these can usually be restored with some effort. At some […]

As the ransomware industry has expanded over the last decade, so have the number of sources attempting to track the phenomenon in all its financial and human horror. Today, keeping up with either has become a full-time job. Ransomware has become ubiquitous, but so have the mainly private sector security companies queuing up to tell […]

As every organization affected by ransomware eventually understands, the disruption caused by an attack is only the beginning of its problems. Next comes paying a lot of big bills. The first is the ransom demand, although at least that’s optional. Beyond that lie unavoidable costs such as loss of business, hiring an expensive forensics company […]

By anyone’s standards, $10 million is a lot of money, more than the average citizen will spend or earn in a lifetime of work. How many ways might someone become the recipient of such a large sum? A lottery win perhaps, although that’s statistically unlikely. An inheritance? More imaginable but still improbable. And yet there […]

Until early June, it’s likely that the only people who’d heard of Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer platform were people working in IT departments. Then news emerged that the platform and many of its large customer base had been successfully targeted by the Clop ransomware group and suddenly everyone had heard of it for the […]