Cyberattacks leave school data encrypted
A spate of cyber attacks against schools in the UK has brought The Church of England St Augustine Academy in Kent’s email and IT systems to a grinding halt.
Reports say that an ‘outside criminal organization’ has encrypted the school’s data, with investigators suspecting that the encrypted data is the work of ransomware actors.
Investigations are continuing to ascertain whether any data has been stolen by the threat actors.
If convicted, Russian threat actors face lengthy imprisonment
The nine Russian citizens who used the Conti ransomware variant to attack hospitals and healthcare providers, affecting critical infrastructure in 47 states in the US and 31 other countries, have been charged.
Among the charges are conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to launder the proceeds of the scheme and falsely registering domains.
If convicted, the sentences for these crimes could amount to a penalty of 20 years imprisonment for key pins of the operation.
‘Charming Kitten’ takes backdoor into 34 company systems
A threat actor, dubbed ‘Charming Kitten’, has been using a malware called Sponsor to gain backdoor entry into the computer systems of 34 companies in different nations. Also known as Ballistic Bobcat, investigations have shown the threat actor to be Iranian in origin.
A large percentage of the attacks have been targeted at Israeli networks.
The sponsor is able to evade detection by using malicious batch scripts and has been employing a Microsoft Exchange remote code execution vulnerability to gain this backdoor access into targeted systems.
