Ascension Confirms Ransomware Attack, Ongoing Recovery Efforts

Ascension, which operates 140 hospitals across the United States, has confirmed that an ongoing service outage was caused by a ransomware attack.  The organization says that they have implemented procedures to “ensure patient care delivery continues to be safe and...
May 13, 2024

Before Recycling a Hard Drive, Read This

You should never toss a hard drive into a dumpster — hard drives are recyclable, and given that we create more than 59 million tons of electronic waste every year, every bit of recycling counts (pardon the pun).  But while...
May 8, 2024

DragonForce Ransomware Group Posts Audio of Conversations with Victims

In an apparent attempt to compel their victim to pay up, the ransomware gang DragonForce has published a recording of a phone call with one of its victims’ employees. The recording was published on DragonForce’s dark web page. For ethical...
April 14, 2024

Should You Pay For Ransomware? Never — Here’s Why.

Ransomware payments reached an estimated $1.1 billion in 2023, per a report from crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis. It’s no wonder that ransomware is a growing threat — and from the victims’ perspective, the temptation to pay is certainly understandable. But...
April 10, 2024

What Is Data Exfiltration in Cybersecurity?

Data exfiltration refers to any malicious attack that steals data from the victim. It’s also known as “data theft,” though the term “data exfiltration” is more specific to the data on networks or larger-scale IT systems (as opposed to the...
March 26, 2024

FBI Reports: Ransomware Complaints Rose By 18% in 2023

The FBI’s 2023 Internet Crime Report (PDF) shows the dramatic growth of the ransomware industry — and details some of the techniques that bad actors use to compromise critical IT systems. It’s important to note that these statistics are not...
March 12, 2024

UnitedHealth Outage: Blackcat Ransomware Gang Disrupts Pharmacies Across U.S.

According to a report from Reuters, the Blackcat ransomware gang is behind a massive ransomware attack that has impacted prescription deliveries throughout the United States. Last week, bad actors reportedly gained access to systems owned by Change Healthcare, a prescription...
February 26, 2024

Free Ransomware Decryption Tool Released for Rhysida

A group of researchers has released a free recovery tool for data encrypted by Rhysida ransomware.  The Rhysida ransomware variant appeared towards the beginning of 2023 and spread quickly, primarily targeting education, healthcare, manufacturing, government, and information technology (IT) sectors....
February 14, 2024

White Phoenix Ransomware Recovery Tool: What to Know

White Phoenix is an open-source ransomware decryption tool, intended for use with larger files encrypted by the Play ransomware group and other ransomware variants that use intermittent encryption. The tool is available on GitHub here, and it’s both free...
January 31, 2024

Report: 75% of Organizations Hit By Ransomware in 2023

In a report from software company Veeam, 75% of businesses said that they’d dealt with ransomware or malware attacks in 2023. The attacks were cited as the most common cause of technology outages, and many organizations were subjected to multiple...
January 18, 2024