The House Thursday passed the bipartisan Securing Energy Infrastructure Act, which aims to remove vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to access the energy grid. The bill was sponsored by Representatives Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) and John Carter (R-Tex.) and mirrors the Senate legislation introduced by Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho). It seeks to…
After attempting to recover from a ransomware attack for about a week, the La Porte County Board of Commissioners opted to pay the $130,000 ransom in order to regain access to their network. Local news reports have the county paying the ransom after negotiating with the attackers and noting that insurance will cover about $100,000…
The cyber onslaught against municipalities continued last week with New Bedford, Mass., Gila County, Ariz., and the Syracuse, N.Y., school district all being subjected to attacks. The city of New Bedford, Mass. was hit early last week in what appears to be a ransomware attack, but according to published reports and statements from local officials…
The United States Conference of Mayors issued a resolution at its 87th annual meeting to stand united against paying ransoms when their municipality is hit with a ransomware attack. The organization stated in its resolution that paying ransoms merely encourages others to conduct similar attacks by showing there could be a financial benefit, and that…
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) hit British Airways with a record-breaking £183 million fine for last year’s data breach that compromised the personal data of half a million customers. The fine is the first to be made public under The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which went into effect last year. The attack was the…
Border-surveillance subcontractor Perceptics was suspended by The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after a cyberattack against the firm revealed sensitive monitoring details.The license-plate scanner and surveillance equipment firm was hit by an unknown assailant in an attack that revealed images of “fewer than 100,000” travelers faces, images of license plates, equipment schematics, HR records,…
The New York State Legislature last month passed The Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security (SHIELD) Act, which is intended to strengthen the state’s data security laws by more explicitly defining when and how businesses must notify the public and attorney general of a data breach incident. The proposed legislation, introduced by State Senator…
The U.S. Virgin Islands Police department was hit with a ransomware attack in April that targeted servers housing internal affairs records and citizen complaints while the territory’s water department was separately hit with a business email compromise (BEC). “A lot of our files got corrupted, so we did notify the FBI and we are working with…
A mysterious hacker has for years been tricking Libyan citizens into infecting themselves with mobile and desktop malware by luring them to weaponized Facebook pages that impersonate key local figures and purport to deliver news of interest to the civil war-torn nation’s people. Researchers from Check Point Software Technologies have traced the campaign – dubbed…
The state of Georgia’s court system has reportedly been hit by a ransomware attack, according to local NBC affiliate WXIA-TV, citing Administrative Office of the Courts spokesman Bruce Shaw. The website www.georgia.courts.gov, which represents the Administrative Office of the Courts as well as the Judicial Council of Georgia is not operational as of 1:30 p.m.…
