First is the news related to Southampton County of Virginia, as information is out that personal information of many county populaces was stolen in a ransomware attack that occurred in September 2022.
Details are in that cyber criminals gained access to a server at Southampton and siphoned details such as name, social security numbers, driving license details and addresses of the county populace.
FBI Cyber Crimes division has taken a note of the incident and has launched a probe on who was behind the attack.
Second is the news related to study made by the security firm Cybereason. According to the recent report released by the firm titled ‘Ransomware Attacks don’t take Holidays’, there is a high probability that the attacks might surge by 50% during the holiday season, that what was observed the whole year till now.
Meaning, threat actors do not take holidays, unlike staff members who have a regular off on weekends and during Christmas. Therefore, companies need to be extra vigilant during these days and must have adequate support to mitigate risks associated with the cybercrime.
Hence, companies need to either hire security professionals on a freelance basis or order its current staff to keep a vigil on the networks during weekends and Christmas & New Year that are fast approaching.
Third is the news related to Department of Health and Human Services that has issued a warning that all businesses operating in the healthcare sector should stay cautious about Lorenz Ransomware spreading gang that demand $700,000 as ransom to free up data from encryption.
Lorenz Ransomware spreading gang focused more on public sector companies from February 2021 to October 2022. But now shifted their focus to healthcare organizations as the demand for patient and medical history data has gained the interest of buyers by many folds.
Fourth is the news related to a new ransomware variant dubbed as Trigona. Malware Hunter Team has reportedly discovered a new file encrypting malware that appears to be a rebranded version of old ransomware. And the specialty of this hacking group is that they accept on Monero as ransom payments. BTW, Trigona is a village name in Germany and a renowned game hosted on Chinese servers, also used to operate with the same name until September 2020.
