On Wednesday, June 19, 2024, a ransomware attack launched by a hacking group called BlackSuit took down the operations of approximately 15,000 North American auto retailers. The hackers did not actually attack the individual car dealerships, but rather, they attacked a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider named CDK. The CDK Dealer Management System software handled everything from […]
In the summer of 2023, a Chinese hacking group tracked as Storm-0558 compromised Microsoft’s cloud, eventually leading to the breach of hundreds of thousands of emails, including those email accounts of U.S. government officials in charge of managing our relationship with China (Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, United States Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China […]
A new study conducted by researchers at TorGuard, an online protection company, has revealed the states most at risk of internet crime — and Alaska ranks #1. The TorGuard team analyzed data from the recently updated FBI Internet Crime Report to produce a list of the states most at risk of a cyberattack. The research […]
A few weeks ago, a Swiss newspaper story about “3 million hacked toothbrushes” went viral. I personally shared a link about the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack with my cybersecurity coworkers via Teams message, prompting a number of comments and “Jurassic Park” memes. We all fell for it, but there is very little evidence that this […]
After suffering a major data breach six years ago, you would think that a company like Uber would be ready for more cyberattacks, but here we are. How did we get here? [insert flashback music] It was late 2016. Cyberattackers quietly breached the security perimeter of Uber networks and accessed the personal data of 57 […]
Last month I wrote about cybersecurity in schools and what steps we can take to prevent attacks from happening. I wrote in the blog that there are many things we can do to harden our security and to make our institutions less of a soft target. Yet, as I pointed out in that piece, chances […]
When we last saw our intrepid integrator, they were working through some hard choices. Their company had fallen victim to a ransomware attack. They were locked out of all of their files, and the attackers were threatening to put all of their sensitive information on the internet if they didn’t pay a hefty ransom. What […]
Unless you’ve been shortlisted for a Nobel prize or you’re waiting on the birth of a baby, early morning phone calls are never a good thing. When Joe (the owner of the company that I just made up in my head) got a call from Kate (his equally made-up service manager) at 6:30 a.m., he […]
Why did the pipeline get shut down if the hackers only attacked the business end? For each column in this series, rAVe writer Paul Konikowski takes a deeper dive into a recent security event or data breach, shedding light on supply chain vulnerabilities, infrastructure and cyber-physical security. By now, most people heard about the Colonial […]
