SecurityWeek

A new report from theat intelligence firm Flashpoint highlights dark web discussion over targeting hospitals with ransomware - and demonstrates a surprising contrast in opinion. Not all criminals agree with the concept. The problem is it takes only one to disagree.

Flashpoint, a threat intelligence firm that studies the so called 'Deep and Dark Web', has spent five months studying an organized Russian ransomware campaign. It concludes that ransomware is joining other cyber criminal activities by becoming a service - in this case, 'ransomware-as-a-Service'. This particular campaign uses the proven business affiliate model.

The sixth annual survey from Smarsh on financial services communications compliance issues shows that regulatory scrutiny and compliance difficulties are increasing while resources and solutions are not.

Trend Micro researchers have come across a new point-of-sale (PoS) malware family that has been described as quick and efficient when it comes to exfiltrating harvested data.

General Electric has released firmware updates for several of its MultiLink series switches to address a critical vulnerability that hackers could exploit to gain administrative access to devices.

An advanced persistent threat (APT) group believed to be based in Pakistan has been observed targeting government and military personnel in India using spear phishing emails and watering hole attacks.

Security testing firm IOActive recently surveyed 129 security professionals on the security of Internet of Things devices at its IOAsis San Francisco 2016 event March 1-2, 2016. The result shows extensive distrust of IoT security.

Malware developers have made some significant improvements to the Marcher Trojan, which is now also being leveraged by cybercriminals to target the customers of major banks in the United Kingdom.

FireEye has come across a mysterious piece of malware that appears to be designed to target industrial control systems (ICS), but which could just be part of someone’s research efforts.

Throughout history Operations Security (OPSEC) has been a key tactic used by commercial and military organizations to protect privacy and anonymity. When done well, it denies adversaries information they could use to do harm to an organization or individual. But criminals also use OPSEC as a means to an end – avoiding detection, maintaining availability of their attack infrastructure, and retaining access to environments they have compromised. 

During a meeting last week in Belgium with Koen Van Impe, a security analyst with federal cyber emergency team, CERT.be, he recommended I look at a report involving a cyber espionage case involving the firm RUAG.

New Android spyware, apparently targeting government security job seekers, has been detected in Saudi Arabia. The code is poor but the malware works efficiently, claims McAfee in a report published yesterday.

Chinese Cyber Spies Hack Taiwan Ruling Party: Security Firm Mainland hackers were likely to be behind an attack on the website of Taiwan's ruling party, a US-based security firm said Thursday, as the island warns of growing cyber threats.

Law enforcement officers have arrested 50 hackers across Russia involved in bank fraud using the Lurk trojan, following 86 raids in 15 regions. Fourteen main participants including the three primary organizers were arrested in the Sverdlovsk region. An estimated $45 million has been stolen by the gang, while a further $30 million loss has been prevented by the police. The investigation of the Lurk banking trojan gang was assisted by Kaspersky Lab.

Cisco informed customers on Wednesday that it has released patches for several medium and high severity vulnerabilities affecting its Prime Network Analysis Module products.