Tag: Numbers | Page 3

Fourth quarter numbers being rechecked post-ransomware, says SpiceJet

July 9, 2022/in Internet Security

The airline said its Q4 FY22 financial result was prepared before the ransomware attack

SpiceJet has retrieved its system and data following the ransomware attack last month, the aviation company has said. The company’s fourth quarter result has not been declared as yet as auditors are re-authenticating financial numbers, it added.

“Our financial results have been delayed due to reasons beyond the company’s control as a result of the ransomware attack that affected our IT systems, which includes certain data as well,” SpiceJet said in a statement.

The airline said its Q4 FY22 financial result was prepared before the ransomware attack. But now the numbers are being re-authenticated by auditors. “The process is normal in such events,” it added.

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.

As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and…

Source…

Hacker Accused of Downloading Social Security Numbers Stands Trial

June 12, 2022/in Computer Security

The trial is underway of an accused hacker who prosecutors say downloaded the personal information of 100 million Capital One customers, including 140,000 Social Security numbers.

According to the New York Times, the defendant is a former Amazon employee who claimed she was doing legitimate research. She’s been charged with ten counts of computer fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft, and the trial is taking place in federal court in Seattle.

“They are interpreting a statute so broadly that it captures conduct that is innocent and as a society, we should be supporting, which is security researchers going out on the internet and trying to make it safer,” the woman’s lawyer told the newspaper.

The U.S. attorney, however, claims that the woman was “motivated both to make money and to gain notoriety in the hacking community and beyond,” according to a legal filing reported by the newspaper.

In other news related to Social Security-involved crimes:

A sixty-nine-year-old West Virginia woman has pled guilty to charges of theft of government benefits and making materially false statements to federal agents.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of West Virginia, the woman has admitted that she collected Social Security benefits meant for a deceased relative. The collections took place over a four-year period between 2016 and 2020, and she collected $46,356 in federal benefits.

The woman also, per the prosecutors, has admitted that she lied to federal investigators, first lying that she was her sister, and then claiming that she would be out of town for a month. She is scheduled to be sentenced in September, facing a maximum of fifteen years in prison.

And in Indiana, a woman was accused of stealing nearly $70,000 in Social Security funds that were meant for her deceased sister, as reported by the Greenfield Reporter, citing a Social Security Administration (SSA) report.

The woman was charged with a Level 5 felony count of theft and a Level 5 felony count of welfare fraud.

Per the newspaper article, the woman “had a scheme to defraud the Social Security Disability Benefits Program.” After her sister passed away, the woman did not notify…

Source…

OODA Loop – What You Need To Know About The Internet’s Latest Problem: Repeating Random Numbers!

January 23, 2022/in Internet Security

Digital Certificates are a foundational building block of the Internet. They are used to verify the identity of e-commerce sites, the authenticity of software and encrypt data. Not surprisingly, cyberattackers try to create fake Certificates or get the Private Keys for real ones to steal data or intercept communications. No one really worried about the Certificates themselves – until now. It seems the random numbers used to generate Certificates sometimes are the same.

To understand the problem it’s useful to take a 30 second tutorial on Digital Certificates. For those of you who might have managed to stay awake during math class you’ll remember that Asymmetric Cryptography utilizes 2 prime numbers to create a Public and Private Key for a Digital Certificate. The Public Key maps an input (that you want to keep secret) to a large number field while the Private Key reverses the transaction. The theory goes that since there’s an infinite set of prime numbers, there’s an infinite set of Public/Private key combinations. To make sure the prime numbers are different a Random Number Generator (RNG) is used. Sounds pretty secure. Infinite is a big number. What could go wrong?

Well the real world is a bit different than math class. It seems the random number generators (RNG) on computer devices really don’t generate an infinite set of primes but rather a bounded set that in turn generates a set of Public/Private Key combinations. This new analysis is a result of the dramatic cost reduction in high performance computing that now enables the simulation of a chip’s RNG function and the Certificates they generate.

From an Internet security perspective, the ability of a cyberattacker to know an organization’s Private Key has huge implications. Attackers can potentially impersonate web sites, intercept secure connections or decrypt any piece of data just by looking at the Public Key. Examples of this attack are not just seen in labs. In one case, for instance, on January 7 2019 the University of California Davis sent an advisory of all students visiting China that their “secure” What’sApp messages were being monitored.

For enterprises that rely on Digital Certificates for their…

Source…

Hard Numbers: Global vaccine good news, rampant ransomware, 5G growing fast, Spanish wind power

December 17, 2021/in Internet Security

58.1: As of December 17, 56.6 percent of the global population has received at least one COVID vaccine shot. We sometimes don’t realize how big of an achievement this is from just a year ago, when frontline health workers were the first to get jabs.

11: A ransomware attack occurred every 11 seconds in 2021, according to one estimate. Earlier this year, hackers carried out their most famous attack to date against Colonial Pipeline, which supplies almost half of the oil and gas consumed in the US Eastern Seaboard.

540 million: Global 5G connections are expected to reach 540 million by the end of the year, according to a new report. That’s more than double the amount in all of 2020.

23.1: Wind became Spain’s top energy source this year, overtaking nuclear for the first time. Half of the country’s energy now comes from renewable sources, which the government hopes will help bring down sky-high power prices in 2021.

Source…

Tag Archive for: Numbers

The airline said its Q4 FY22 financial result was prepared before the ransomware attack

Dear Reader,