Tag Archive for: affecting

Judson ISD investigating possible ransomware attack affecting district communication, officials say

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LIVE OAK, Texas – Judson ISD officials say they are investigating a possible ransomware attack that left them without phone or email access.

The school district announced the “suspected but unconfirmed ransomware attack” Friday afternoon in a release.

Judson ISD’s Chief Communications Officer Dr. Nicole Taguinod issued the following statement below:

“It has been determined that Judson ISD’s information technology systems have been compromised as the result of a suspected but unconfirmed ransomware attack. We immediately notified federal, state and local law enforcement. We have also engaged independent forensic investigators and third-party experts who are working around the clock, in cooperation with law enforcement, to determine the nature and extent of this attack. It is unclear at this time what information might have been accessed. There is nothing more important to Judson ISD than the safety, security and wellbeing of our employees, students and their families. This includes the protection of your personal data stored within the district’s information technology systems, and we are committed to a successful resolution. We will be sharing updates on our website, social media and the district mass communication system as we are able to do so.”

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Judson ISD is working with forensic investigators, law enforcement, and others to determine the severity of the breach.

This is a developing story, and we’ll bring more updates as they become available. For more updates, visit the school district’s website here.

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Computer scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally — ScienceDaily

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In 2018, industry and academic researchers revealed a potentially devastating hardware flaw that made computers and other devices worldwide vulnerable to attack.

Researchers named the vulnerability Spectre because the flaw was built into modern computer processors that get their speed from a technique called “speculative execution,” in which the processor predicts instructions it might end up executing and preps by following the predicted path to pull the instructions from memory. A Spectre attack tricks the processor into executing instructions along the wrong path. Even though the processor recovers and correctly completes its task, hackers can access confidential data while the processor is heading the wrong way.

Since Spectre was discovered, the world’s most talented computer scientists from industry and academia have worked on software patches and hardware defenses, confident they’ve been able to protect the most vulnerable points in the speculative execution process without slowing down computing speeds too much.

They will have to go back to the drawing board.

A team of University of Virginia School of Engineering computer science researchers has uncovered a line of attack that breaks all Spectre defenses, meaning that billions of computers and other devices across the globe are just as vulnerable today as they were when Spectre was first announced. The team reported its discovery to international chip makers in April and will present the new challenge at a worldwide computing architecture conference in June.

The researchers, led by Ashish Venkat, William Wulf Career Enhancement Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UVA Engineering, found a whole new way for hackers to exploit something called a “micro-op cache,” which speeds up computing by storing simple commands and allowing the processor to fetch them quickly and early in the speculative execution process. Micro-op caches have been built into Intel computers manufactured since 2011.

Venkat’s team discovered that hackers can steal data when a processor fetches commands from the micro-op cache.

“Think about a hypothetical airport security scenario where TSA lets you in without checking your…

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Man indicted in $27M ransomware fraud case affecting Maryland senior living provider – News

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The Department of Justice last week announced a coordinated international law enforcement action against hackers who defrauded a Maryland senior living provider, among other victims, of more than $27 million.

Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a Canadian national, was indicted on conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, intentional damage to a protected computer, and transmitting a demand in relation to damaging a protected computer.

The indictment, filed in the Middle District of Florida, states that Vachon-Desjardins was part of a hacker ring known as NetWalker that extorted at least $27.6 million from companies, municipalities, hospitals, law enforcement, emergency services, school districts, colleges and universities through ransomware attacks.

As McKnight’s Senior Living previously reported, Lorien Health Services, which offers assisted living, skilled nursing and rehabilitation at nine locations in Maryland, was one of NetWalker’s alleged victims. The data breach last summer reportedly exposed the personal information of 47,754 residents.

The Justice Department said the ransomware attacks specifically targeted the healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, “taking advantage of the global crisis to extort victims.” 

The government was able to seize approximately $454,530.19 in cryptocurrency from ransom payments to Vachon-Desjardins, as well as disable a “dark web” hidden resource used to communicate with NetWalker ransomware victims.

As part of the joint international effort, Bulgarian law enforcement seized computers affiliated with NetWalker. A dark web blog that posted the files of NetWalker victims who refused to pay the ransom now displays a graphic indicating that it was seized by government agencies.

According to court documents, once a victim’s computer network is compromised and data are encrypted, actors that deploy NetWalker deliver a ransom note to the victim. Hackers typically gain unauthorized access to a computer network days or weeks before delivering a ransom note, according to the Justice Department.

The department explained that NetWalker operates a “ransomware-as-a-service…

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