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    1 Oct, 2020
    Ransomware Victims That Pay Up Could Incur Steep Fines from Uncle Sam
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , , ,

    Companies victimized by ransomware and firms that facilitate negotiations with ransomware extortionists could face steep fines from the U.S. federal government if the crooks who profit from the attack are already under economic sanctions, the Treasury Department warned today. …

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    29 Sep, 2020
    Who’s Behind Monday’s 14-State 911 Outage?
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , , ,

    Emergency 911 systems were down for more than an hour on Monday in towns and cities across 14 U.S. states. The outages led many news outlets to speculate the problem was related to Microsoft’s Azure web services platform, which also was struggling with a widespread outage at the time. However, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity the 911 issues stemmed from some kind of technical snafu involving Intrado and Lumen, two companies that together handle 911 calls for a broad swath of the United States. …

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    25 Sep, 2020
    Who is Tech Investor John Bernard?
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , , , , ,

    John Bernard, the subject of a story here last week about a self-proclaimed millionaire investor who has bilked countless tech startups, appears to be a pseudonym for John Clifton Davies, a U.K. man who absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to his conviction, Davies served 16 months in jail before being cleared of murdering his wife on their honeymoon in India. …

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    24 Sep, 2020
    Microsoft: Attackers Exploiting ‘ZeroLogon’ Windows Flaw
    Cybersecurity , , , , , ,

    Microsoft warned on Wednesday that malicious hackers are exploiting a particularly dangerous flaw in Windows Server systems that could be used to give attackers the keys to the kingdom inside a vulnerable corporate network. Microsoft’s warning comes just days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued an emergency directive instructing all federal agencies to patch the vulnerability by Sept. 21 at the latest. …

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    23 Sep, 2020
    Govt. Services Firm Tyler Technologies Hit in Apparent Ransomware Attack
    Cybersecurity , ,

    Tyler Technologies, a Texas-based company that bills itself as the largest provider of software and technology services to the United States public sector, is battling a network intrusion that has disrupted its operations. The company declined to discuss the exact cause of the disruption, but their response so far is straight out of the playbook for responding to ransomware incidents. …

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    17 Sep, 2020
    Chinese Antivirus Firm Was Part of APT41 ‘Supply Chain’ Attack
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    The U.S. Justice Department this week indicted seven Chinese nationals for a decade-long hacking spree that targeted more than 100 high-tech and online gaming companies. The government alleges the men used malware-laced phishing emails and “supply chain” attacks to steal data from companies and their customers. One of the alleged hackers was first profiled here in 2012 as the owner of a Chinese antivirus firm. …

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    16 Sep, 2020
    Two Russians Charged in $17M Cryptocurrency Phishing Spree
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , ,

    U.S. authorities today announced criminal charges and financial sanctions against two Russian men accused of stealing nearly $17 million worth of virtual currencies in a series of phishing attacks throughout 2017 and 2018 that spoofed websites for some of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. …

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    14 Sep, 2020
    Due Diligence That Money Can’t Buy
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , ,

    Most of us automatically put our guard up when someone we don’t know promises something too good to be true. But when the too-good-to-be-true thing starts as our idea, sometimes that instinct fails to kick in. Here’s the story of how companies searching for investors to believe in their ideas can run into trouble. …

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    8 Sep, 2020
    Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Sept. 2020 Edition
    Cybersecurity , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Microsoft today released updates to remedy nearly 130 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and supported software. None of the flaws are known to be currently under active exploitation, but 23 of them could be exploited by malware or malcontents to seize complete control of Windows computers with little or no help from users. …

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    3 Sep, 2020
    The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email Account
    Cybersecurity

    When you own a short email address at a popular email provider, you are bound to get gobs of spam, and more than a few alerts about random people trying to seize control over the account. If your account name is short and desirable enough, this kind of activity can make the account less reliable for day-to-day communications because it tends to bury emails you do want to receive. But there is also a puzzling side to all this noise: Random people tend to use your account as if it were theirs, and often for some fairly sensitive services online. …

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