Trickbot malware might be back, who stole this database, USCelluar hacked and beware of ads on search engines

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday, February 1. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.

You’ll recall that last week law enforcement authorities took down the servers distributing the Emotet malware. The question is, how fast will the crooks behind Emotet bounce back? One answer is to look at a similar malware distribution operation called Trickbot. Last October the Trickbot computer infrastructure was also taken over. Well, a few days ago a cybersecurity firm called Menlo Security said the distribution of Trickbot appears to be back. Researchers discovered email targeted at people who work at law firms and insurance companies in North America with a suspicious message. It says, ‘You’ve been detected with a traffic infringement. Reason: Negligent driving.’ There’s a button to click on that’s supposed to show a photo with proof the reader has broken a traffic law. This is obviously a fake intended to scare the reader. Because if they click on the button, instead of a photo their computer is infected with malware looks similar to the stuff the developers behind Trickbot used for years. Are the people behind Trickbot back? It’s not clear yet. But remember, the developers behind Trickbot — and Emotet — are still out there.

Here’s another mystery: Who copied a database of eight years of court records with personal information from Cook County, Illinois and left it sitting unprotected on the internet? The database was discovered last September by a news site called Website Planet. It appeared to be a copy of data held in the court records management system for the county, which includes Chicago. Nearly every record had personal information such as names, home addresses, email addresses, case numbers and information about criminal, family and immigration cases going back to 2012. Anyone who tripped over the database on the internet could have read it because it wasn’t password protected. And they could have used the information for criminal purposes. News of this is only coming out now because it took…