U.K. Minister calls for encryption backdoors
Following last week’s Westminster attack, a UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd is calling for encryption backdoors so the government could access messages in encrypted apps. It was reported that the suspect, Khalid Masood, used the end-to-end encrypted chatting app WhatsApp, which is encrypted in a way so that police cannot retrieve messages without his password. Read more.
North Korea’s rising ambition seen in bid in breach global banks
According to The New York Times, North Korea has left a trail of IP addresses that show how they have targeted a few financial institutions including World Bank, European Central Bank and Bank of America. Polish banks took up the majority of the targets, and the second-largest number was in the United States. Read more.
Attackers Targeting Anonymous FTP Servers in Healthcare
The FBI has issued a warning that threat actors are going after anonymous File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers associated with medical and dental organizations. The goal of these attackers is to access protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). The anonymous FTP extension lets users authenticate to the server with a common username and no password, or a generic password or email address. Read more.
Apple iCloud Hack Threat Gets Worse
Hackers calling themselves the Turkish Crime Family are demanding Apple pay a ransom in bitcoin or they will remotely erase 250 million customer Apple devices. The story initially broke on Motherboard a week ago. The hacker group is threatening to reset the passwords on the iCloud accounts and remotely wipe customer devices if Apple doesn't pay a ransom by April 7. Read more.
USB Keyloggers left on Computers Across a University Campus in Canada
According to an article in Motherboard:Vice, many students and faculty of Carleton University in Canada may have been at risk of having personal information stolen if they used school computers. According to an emailed statement, the university discovered USB sticks loaded keylogger software on computers in six classrooms during a routine inspection. Read more.
MIT team urges Trump to secure electric grid from cyber threat
The Trump administration is coming under pressure to safeguard the nation’s critical infrastructure, as experts warn of vulnerabilities in the electrical grid and lawmakers fret about potential cyberattacks. The issue has attracted the attention of policy experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who released a new report Tuesday exploring how to reduce cyber threats to the electrical grid, oil pipelines and other critical infrastructure. Read more.
