Data breaches are tricky to cover, and we want to report on them in an ethical way. That requires picking what should be reported for informed public discourse but avoiding topics that may encourage attackers' efforts to shame victims into paying a ransom and anything resembling data dump voyeurism.
Should Australia's Medibank health insurer pay extortionists to prevent the release of sensitive medical documents related to millions of Australians? There's no easy answer to remedying what is the most severe cybercriminal incident in Australian history.
Is Australia's data breach wave a coincidence, bad luck or intentional targeting? Maybe all three. But the security weaknesses that have led to the incidents are not exotic. And the people behind these attacks are most likely workaday cybercriminals, not top-level nation-state attackers.
Australia's data breach debacle expanded on Thursday. Cyber extortionists who attacked Australian health insurer Medibank provided proof of their hack of medical data. Also, stolen data from Australian wine retailer Vinomofo was put up for sale on a Russian-language forum.
Australia's data regulator says organizations hit by ransomware may be underreporting data breaches because they haven't thoroughly figured out if data was taken. But an "absence of evidence" of a data breach in a ransomware attack isn't sufficient to declare that no data was taken.
Threat intelligence researchers are looking closely at REvil, the ransomware gang that infected up to 1,500 companies in a single swoop. A look at the group's online infrastructure shows clear lines to Russian and U.K. service providers that, in theory, could help law enforcement agencies but don't appear eager to...
Bitcoin has enabled fast payments to cybercriminals pushing ransomware. How to deal with bitcoin is the subject of a spirited debate, with some arguing to restrict it. But bitcoin doesn't always favor cybercriminals, and it may actually be more of an ally than a foe by revealing webs of criminality.
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