Tag Archive for: Looms

Deadline looms for Allen & Overy’s ransomware payment


negotatoare

Ian usually just told lawyers to switch it off and switch it on again.


Allen & Overy has until Tuesday to pay off a gang of cybercriminals or they will release a cache of files stolen from the firm, the hackers have said.

Three weeks ago the LockBit ransomware group announced that it had added the Magic Circle to its long list of victims, which includes Accenture and the Ministry of Defence, and that A&O had until 28 November to pay up.

LockBit originated in countries which belonged to the former Soviet Union and operates as a franchise, providing its software and negotiation framework to affiliates in exchange for a proportion of the ransoms they extort.

Recently the LockBit high table ordered its affiliates to hike the amounts they demand from victims after reportedly being disappointed with the size of ransom payments.

For organisations with revenues upwards of $1 billion, a ransom equating to 0.1% to 3% of the total should be sought, according to a cyberthreat analyst’s report on the gang’s new rates.

That didn’t pan out when an offshoot attempted to extort £66m from Royal Mail. Demands for a sum equivalent to 0.5% of the company’s global revenue faltered when Royal Mail’s negotiator argued that LockBit had actually hacked a loss-making subsidiary of the Plc, Royal Mail International, and that “under no circumstances” would it pay “the absurd amount of money” LockBit had demanded.



On top of which, said Royal Mail’s negotiator, what damage the hack could do had already been done, having triggered a breakdown of the company’s ability to make international deliveries.

Allen & Overy’s revenues were £2.1 billion in 2022, which means if the gang is operating in line with LockBit’s edicts, the firm could currently be attempting to argue down a number between £2.1m and £10.5m.

A&O declined to specify how much the criminals were demanding and whether it was engaging with them, referring RollOnFriday to its statement at the time of the attack when it said it had “experienced a data incident impacting a small number of storage servers”.

LockBit’s ransomware can enter a network via phishing, where an employee receives an email requesting access details which appears…

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As Climate Change Looms, IT Has Many Parts to Play


As we approach the end of 2022, one of the prevailing stories has been the weather. As scientists predicted, the effects of climate change can be seen in our historic weather patterns and events. The western United States has continued to experience a megadrought, now in its 22nd year. Unprecedented heat waves hovered over Europe and China. Heavy rain and floods drenched other parts of the United States, in particular Yellowstone National Park. Hurricanes Ian and Nicole slammed into Florida, South Carolina, and moved up the eastern coastline. Hurricane Ian’s winds were clocked at 150 miles per hour, making it tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the U.S. Each of these weather incidents caused billions of dollars in personal, commercial and governmental damage. We know climate change will affect information technology in many direct and less obvious ways, as weather events can have profound impacts on IT services, infrastructure and planning across the board — in education, government and business.

Information technology plays a central role in forecasting weather. Technology aids forecasting by providing information on transportation safety, agriculture and utilities before, during and after weather events. Supercomputers allow the National Weather Service to predict ever-changing weather patterns with enough confidence to issue watches and warnings. High-performance computing (HPC) allows agencies to utilize multiple supercomputers to process extremely complex calculations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s computer, called Hera, was listed in 2020 by Top500.org as the 88th top supercomputer in the world, based on a Cray CS500 with a compute capacity of 45 million hours per month with 63,840 cores and a total scratch disk capacity of 18.5 Petabytes. One Petabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 Terabytes.

Once dangerous weather is forecast and tracked, technology is critical to our ability to assess damage and mobilize any necessary resources. As Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh said in a contributed piece for Forbes in April 2022, “Almost every organization should prepare…

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Ransomware looms large over the cyber insurance industry


A Panaseer survey of global insurers across the UK and US found that 82% are expecting the rise in premiums to continue, with 74% of insurers agreeing that their inability to accurately understand a customer’s security posture is impacting price increases.

This Help Net Security video highlights how the increasing cost of ransomware affects global insurers.

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Prepare for ‘all-out cyber war’ as next phase of online threats looms, warns expert – Fin24

Prepare for ‘all-out cyber war’ as next phase of online threats looms, warns expert  Fin24

Exercises and cyber simulations must be conducted at all levels of government to prepare for the next phase of cyber threats that will be interwoven across …

“cyber warfare news” – read more