Tag Archive for: infections

Ransomware groups continue assault on healthcare orgs as COVID-19 infections increase

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Ransomware groups have shown no signs of slowing down their assault on hospitals, seemingly ramping up attacks on healthcare institutions as dozens of countries deal with a new wave of COVID-19 infections thanks to the potent Delta variant. 

Vice Society, one of the newer ransomware groups, debuted in June and made a name for themselves by attacking multiple hospitals and leaking patient info. Cybersecurity researchers at Cisco Talos said Vice Society is known to be “quick to exploit new security vulnerabilities to help ransomware attacks” and frequently exploits Windows PrintNightmare vulnerabilities during attacks. 

“As with other threat actors operating in the big-game hunting space, Vice Society operates a data leak site, which they use to publish data exfiltrated from victims who do not choose to pay their extortion demands,” Cisco Talos explained last month. 

Cybersecurity firm Dark Owl added that Vice Society is “assessed to be a possible spin-off of the Hello Kitty ransomware variant based on similarities in the techniques used for Linux system encryption.” They were implicated in a ransomware attack on the Swiss city of Rolle in August, according to Black Fog. 

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The Vice Society leak site. 


Cisco Talos

Multiple hospitals — Eskenazi Health, Waikato DHB and Centre Hospitalier D’Arles — have been featured on the criminal group’s leak site and the group made waves this week by posting the data of Barlow Respiratory Hospital in California.

The hospital was attacked on August 27 but managed to avoid the worst, noting in a statement that “no patients were at risk of harm” and “hospital operations continued without interruption.”

Barlow Respiratory Hospital told ZDNet that law enforcement was immediately notified once the hospital noticed the ransomware impacting some of its IT systems. 

“Though we have taken extensive efforts to protect the privacy of our information, we learned that some data was removed from certain backup systems without…

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Over 100 million malware infections detected on Windows in 2020

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According to data analyzed by Atlas VPN, in 2020 devices with Windows operating systems were affected by over 111 million malware infections.

Out of all of the Windows malware threats detected last year, 83% or nearly 92.3 million were found on consumer devices, while 15% or 16.7 million were discovered on business devices. The remaining 2% of the malware cases were unspecified.

Malware, a malicious software designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system, is one of the most common cyber threats computer users face today. While malware can affect any operating system, Windows users are among the most vulnerable.

Yet despite the impressive number of Windows malware detections in 2020, such threats actually dropped by 12% compared to 2019. According to Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN: “The decline in Windows malware infections might signify that cybercriminals have found other more effective methods to exploit victims online.”

HackTool is fastest rising malware threat

In 2020, we saw a fall in malware infections affecting Windows operating systems. However, despite a general decline, certain types of malware thrived last year.

HackTool, a type of malware used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to a user’s computer, saw the biggest increase in new cases detected on Windows last year when compared to 2019. Infections with HackTool spiked by 150%, from 7.4 million to 18.4 million in a single year.

Other malware types that saw a surge last year included Rogue (117%) and Spyware (28%), which help criminals track and collect information on the victim.

However, the most common Windows malware threat last year was adware —  software that displays unwanted advertisements on people’s computers. It accounted for 32% or 35.5 million Windows malware cases in 2020, a 22% drop from 45.7 million in 2019.

To read the full article, go to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/over-100-million-malware-infections-detected-on-windows-in-2020

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Mac Malware Exploded By 400% In 2018 Far Outpacing New PC Infections

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“Mac threats increased exponentially in comparison to those against Windows PCs … On Windows PCs, Malwarebytes Labs noted a surge in the hack tools category of infections. These types of infections …
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New ransomware infections are the worst drive-by attacks in recent memory

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Screenshot of ransomware.

Enlarge (credit: Malwarebytes)

An ongoing operation that’s installing ransomware and other malware on the computers of unsuspecting website visitors is one of the most potent drive-by attack campaigns researchers have seen in recent memory.

The attacks install three pieces of malware using an exploit kit called GreenFlash Sundown, which researchers identified in 2015 and have continued to follow since. Attacks in recent weeks have spiked again as ShadowGate—one of the names given to the hacker group behind the campaign—has unleashed a highly revamped version of the exploit kit on hacked ad servers run by Web publishers. The most notable compromise is of an ad server belonging to onlinevideoconverter[.]com, a site with more than 200 million visitors per month that converts YouTube videos into video files that can be stored on a computer hard drive.

“They are ongoing and with a scale we haven’t seen in a couple of years when it comes to exploit kit-related attacks,” Jérôme Segura, a Malwarebytes researcher tracking the campaign, said of the attacks on onlinevideoconverter[.]com visitors. “We literally noticed a huge spike in our telemetry starting a few days ago, which is very unusual. Given what we see in our telemetry, this is the most successful drive-by campaign we have seen in quite a while, so we can infer many people were affected by it.”

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