Welcome to the Future!
The FBI advice for ransomeware attacks, which hold a businesses data hostage for a ransom:
DO NOT PAY THE RANSOM.
Refresh my memory, what are some of these ransomeware attacks? Several hospitals in California have had their systems frozen by ransomeware, forcing a move to manual paper hospital administration. The ransoms have been as small as $8,000.
Michigan is proposing life in prison for someone who is convicted of either:
Tech.Mic | Get Caught Hacking a Car and You Could Get Life in Prison, Thanks to Proposed Bill
WHO WAS CONVICTED: A woman in Pennsylvania reported her rape to the police
WHAT EVIDENCE LED TO CONVICTION: When police came to the scene, they collected as evidence the woman’s fitbit found laying in a hallway
WHY DID THE EVIDENCE INDICATE GUILT: The woman claimed she had gone to sleep and was later attacked, but the data downloaded from the Fitbit indicated the woman was walking about at the time and logged her heart rate
Wall Street Journal | Prosecutors Say Fitbit Device Exposed…
What state legislature considered a bill to fine companies that do not decrypt after receiving a court order? California
What happened to this bill to fine companies? Died in committee without a vote
What did opponents to the bill say?
The Hill | Encryption bill draft worries tech community
CNET | Encryption bill would force companies to surrender user data
The U.S. Justice Department arrested invididuals that attempted to break into a small dam to disrupt operations. The informed intel:
Washington Post | U.S. charges Iran-linked hackers with targeting banks, N.Y. dam
Who is touting new legislative approach to cyberstalking? Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.)
What does her bill do?
SC Magazine | SXSW: Dem. lawmaker plans to introduce online harassment legislation
What local governmental entity department was the newest target to hackers holding data for ransom? Durham, N.H., Police Department
How did the hackers do it? Attached a file to a email on a relevant police investigation that appeared to be fax file.
What did the police department do? Pay the ransom? Beat the ransom technology? The police department mitigated damage by recovering the locked files from a backup copy that hadn’t been infected. The department paid no ransom.
Is this…
Who is issuing the warning? The Obama Adminsitration
What entities are being warned about data security threats?
What’s sparked the warning? The attack n the Ukraine’s power grid 2 months ago. It was the first cyberattack that produced a wide spread blackout
What was the target of the cyber attack? industrial control systems that act as the intermediary between computers and the switches
What could hackers do with control…
How much data has been gathered by license plate readers in Texas? Estimated 10 million license plate pictures, with locations, collected by month.
What can be done with this stored license plate information? It can track the location of a vehicle by plotting its sightings by day and time
What’s happening on this legislatively?