Industry Intel

Girl Scouts and OpenText empower future leaders of tomorrow with cyber resilience

The transition to a digital-first world enables us to connect, work and live in a realm where information is available at our fingertips. The children of today will be working in an environment of tomorrow that is shaped by hyperconnectivity. Operating in this...

World Backup Day reminds us all just how precious our data is

Think of all the important files sitting on your computer right now. If your computer crashed tomorrow, would you be able to retrieve your important files? Would your business suffer as a result? As more and more of our daily activities incorporate digital and online...

3 Reasons We Forget Small & Midsized Businesses are Major Targets for Ransomware

The ransomware attacks that make headlines and steer conversations among cybersecurity professionals usually involve major ransoms, huge corporations and notorious hacking groups. Kia Motors, Accenture, Acer, JBS…these companies were some of the largest to be...

How Ransomware Sneaks In

Ransomware has officially made the mainstream. Dramatic headlines announce the latest attacks and news outlets highlight the staggeringly high ransoms businesses pay to retrieve their stolen data. And it’s no wonder why – ransomware attacks are on the rise and the...

An MSP and SMB guide to disaster preparation, recovery and remediation

Introduction It’s important for a business to be prepared with an exercised business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan plan before its hit with ransomware so that it can resume operations as quickly as possible. Key steps and solutions should be followed...

Podcast: Cyber resilience in a remote work world

The global pandemic that began to send us packing from our offices in March of last year upended our established way of working overnight. We’re still feeling the effects. Many office workers have yet to return to the office in the volumes they worked in pre-pandemic....

5 Tips to get Better Efficacy out of Your IT Security Stack

If you’re an admin, service provider, security executive, or are otherwise affiliated with the world of IT solutions, then you know that one of the biggest challenges to overcome is efficacy. Especially in terms of cybersecurity, efficacy is something of an amorphous...

How Cryptocurrency and Cybercrime Trends Influence One Another

Typically, when cryptocurrency values change, one would expect to see changes in crypto-related cybercrime. In particular, trends in Bitcoin values tend to be the bellwether you can use to predict how other currencies’ values will shift, and there are usually...

Cyber News Rundown: Ransomware Attacks on Louisiana Schools

Aug 2, 2019 | Industry Intel

Ransomware Targets Louisiana School Districts

At least four school districts in Louisiana fell victim to a series of ransomware attacks in recent weeks, forcing the governor to issue a state of emergency to allow federal agencies to assist local governments during these situations. The IT systems for each of these school districts were taken offline to stop the further spread of the infection. The severity of the infections varies from district to district.

Sephora’s APAC Customers Exposed

Customers from the Asia Pacific region were recently contacted by Sephora after the discovery of unauthorized access to a database containing sensitive personal information belonging to an undetermined number of users. The company has assured affected victims that no payment card information was included in the stolen data.

CapitalOne Bank Hacked

A former Amazon employee was recently arrested in connection with the breach of over 106 million CapitalOne bank customers. By using a vulnerability in the bank’s firewall the attacker was able to access not only personal data, but also bank account numbers and social security information. It also appears that, during the hack, the attacker attempted to gain the credentials for an administrator account in order to gain additional access to internal systems. Luckily for law enforcement, the attacker was brazen enough to make several social media posts regarding the breach, ultimately leading to her capture.

Honda Database Left Exposed to Public

Sensitive data for nearly 300,000 Honda employees was found in an unsecured database that was publicly available for almost a week and that was still being updated. The database was found to contain internal information on hundreds of networked computers and the employees using them. The researcher who discovered the vulnerability quickly contacted Honda, who in turn properly secured the database.

Officer Data Stolen in LAPD Data Breach

Hackers claim that they have sensitive data on 2,500 LAPD officers and over 17,000 potential applicants after a breach of the department’s network. After learning of the theft, the LAPD began contacting the affected officers and recommending they monitor their financials, though it made no mention of offering credit monitoring services.

Cyber News Rundown: Hackers Expose US Colleges

Jul 26, 2019 | Industry Intel

Vulnerability Exposes Dozens of U.S. Colleges

At least 62 U.S. colleges have been compromised after an authentication vulnerability was discovered by hackers, allowing them to easily access user accounts. At several of the compromised colleges, officials were tipped off after hundreds of fraudulent user accounts were created within a 24-hour period. The vulnerability that was exploited stemmed from a Banner software program that is very widely used by educational institutions; however, many colleges had already patched the flawed software versions and so were unaffected.

Data Breach Affects Lancaster University Applicants

Officials recently announced that a data breach compromised the personal records of all 2019 and 2020 applicants of Lancaster University. Additionally, some applicants have been receiving fraudulent tuition invoices, which the University recommends recipients delete immediately. The breach occurred sometime on Friday, and University officials quickly began contacting the affected parties and securing their IT systems.

Facebook to Pay $5 Billion in FTC Fines

Nearly a year after the Cambridge Analytica discovery, the FTC has issued a record fine of $5 billion to be paid by Facebook in recompense for their deceitful use of the private information from their hundreds of millions of their users. The staggering sum Facebook must pay sets a strong incentive for all industries to handle their customers’ sensitive data with the appropriate security and care, and also to address follow-up actions in the wake of a breach more adequately than Facebook did.

Remote Android Trojan Targets Specific Victims

A new remote-access Trojan, dubbed Monokle, has been spotted working through the Android™ community with a laundry list of dangerous capabilities, most of which are designed to steal information from the infected devices. To make Monokle even more dangerous, it can also install trusted certificates that grant it root level access and near total control over the device.

Fake Browser Update Distributes TrickBot

As TrickBot continues its multi-year streak of mayhem for computer systems and sensitive information, criminals created a new set of fake updates for the Google™ Chrome and Mozilla™ Firefox browsers that would push a TrickBot download. The updates appear to have originated at a phony Office365 site that does give users a legitimate link to a browser download, though it quickly prompts the user to install an update which installs the TrickBot executable.

Cyber News Rundown: Evite Data Breach

Jul 19, 2019 | Industry Intel

Over 100 Million Accounts Exposed in Evite Breach

More than 100 million users of Evite were exposed after the company’s servers were compromised earlier this year. While the company doesn’t store financial information, plenty of other personally identifiable information was found in the leaked database dump. The initial figures for the breach were thought to be much lower, as another database dump of 10 million Evite users was found on an underground marketplace around the time they discovered the unauthorized access, though that site was shut down soon after.

American Express Suffers Phishing Attack

Many American Express customers recently fell victim to an email phishing attack that used the uncommon tactic of hiding the URL domain when hovering over the hyperlink. The attack itself, which requests the victim open a hyperlink to verify their personal information before re-routing them to a malicious site, was reliably full of spelling and grammar mistakes. The phishing landing page, though, looks nearly identical to the real American Express site and even has a drop-down list to catch multiple types of user accounts.

NHS Worries Over XP Machines

Over five years after Microsoft officially ceased support for Windows XP, the UK government has revealed that there are still over 2,000 XP machines still being used by its National Health Services (NHS). Even after becoming one of the largest targets of the 2017 WannaCry attacks, the NHS has been incredibly slow to roll out both patches and full operating sytem upgrades. While the number of effected systems, the NHS has over 1.4 million computers under their control and is working to get all upgraded to Windows 10.

Google Defends Monitoring of Voice Commands

Following a media leak of over 1,000 voice recordings, Google is being forced to defend their policy of having employees monitor all “OK Google” queries. After receiving the leaked recordings, a news organization in Belgium was able to positively identify several individuals, many of whom were having conversations that shouldn’t have been saved by the Google device in the first place. The company argues that they need language experts to review the queries and correct any accent or language nuances that may be missing from the automated response.

Monroe College Struck with Ransomware

All campuses of Monroe College were affected by a ransomware attack late last week that took down many of their computer systems. The attackers then demanded a ransom of $2 million, though it doesn’t appear that the college will cave to such exorbitant demands. Currently, the college’s systems are still down, but officials have been working to contact affected students and connect them with the proper assistance with finishing any coursework disrupted by the attack.

Cyber News Rundown: Major Spike in Magecart Attacks

Jul 12, 2019 | Industry Intel

Magecart Attacks See Spike in Automation

The latest attack in the long string of Magecart breaches has apparently affected over 900 e-commerce sites in under 24 hours. This increase over the previous attack, which affected 700 sites, suggests that its authors are working on improving the automation of these information-stealing attacks. The results of these types of attacks can be seen in the latest major fines being issued under GDPR, including one to Marriott for $123 million and another to British Airways for a whopping $230.5 million.

Agent Smith Android Malvertiser Spotted

Researchers have been tracking the resurgence of an Android-based malware campaign that disguises itself as any number of legitimate applications to deliver spam advertisements. After being installed from a third-party app store, the malware checks both a hardcoded list and the command-and-control server for available apps to swap out for malicious copies, without alerting the device owner. The majority of targeted devices have been located in southwestern Asia, with other attacks showing up in both Europe and North America.

Third Florida City Faces Ransomware Attack

Almost exactly one month after the ransomware attack on Lake City, Florida, a third Florida city is being faced a hefty Bitcoin ransom to restore their systems after discovering a variant of the Ryuk ransomware. Similar to the prior two attacks, this one began with an employee opening a malicious link from an email, allowing the malware to spread through connected systems. It is still unclear if the city will follow the others and pay the ransom.

British Airways Receives Record GDPR Fine

Following a data breach last year that affected over 500,000 customers, British Airways has been hit with a total fine amount of $230.5 million. The amount is being seen as a warning to other companies regarding the severity of not keeping customer data safe, though it’s still much less than the maximum fine amount of up to 4% of the company’s annual turnover.

Georgia Court System Narrowly Avoids Ransomware Attack

Thanks to the quick work of the IT team from Georgia’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), a ransomware attack that hit their systems was swiftly isolated, leading to minimal damage. Even more fortunate for the AOC, the only server that was affected was an applications server used by some courts but which shouldn’t disrupt normal court proceedings. Just days after the initial attack, the IT teams (aided by multiple law enforcement agencies) were already in the process of returning to normal operations without paying a ransom.

Cyber News Rundown: Second Florida Ransomware Attack

Jun 28, 2019 | Industry Intel

Second Florida City Pays Ransom

Following the news that Riviera Beach, FL would pay the ransom demanded by cyberattackers, the mayor of Lake City, FL has announced that the city will be paying the demanded ransom of $460,000 to restore access to their email and internal system servers. While law enforcement agencies strongly recommend against paying the ransom and suggest that victims instead attempt to recover encrypted files through backups or other offline methods, many companies who fall prey to ransomware attacks do not keep complete backups of their systems, so they may have no choice but to pay.

Group Arrested in Domain Spoofing Scam

Several individuals were recently arrested for creating a spoof domain for Blockchain.com, a site that allows users to access their cryptocurrency wallets. The individuals in question successfully stole over $27 million’ worth of various currencies from roughly 4,000 victims by using their spoofed site to steal wallet credentials. The group was captured in two separate countries after more than a year of investigation.

Database for Insurance Marketing Site Exposed

A database belonging to MedicareSupplement.com, an insurance marketing site, was found to be publicly accessible, exposing the records of over 5 million customers. While it is unclear how long the database had been improperly secured, the researcher who discovered it in mid-May promptly reported it to the database owner. Amongst data exposed were nearly a quarter million records that indicated specific insurance categories.

Report Reveals Countries Most Targeted by Ransomware

A new report has run the numbers to uncover the top five countries most targeted by ransomware. So far in 2019, the list includes the USA, Brazil, India, Vietnam, and Turkey. During the first quarter of this year alone, the USA took 11% of the attacks, with Brazil coming in right behind with 10% of the total number of attacks. Even more concerning: the average ransom demand has nearly doubled since this time last year, jumping from around $6,700 to ca. $12,700.

IoT Malware Bricks Devices

Researchers have just found a new type of malware, dubbed Silex, that focuses on IoT devices running with default credentials. The malware then bricks—i.e., breaks in an irreparable or unrecoverable fashion—the entire device. The Silex authors claim to have distributed it with the specific intention of rendering devices unusable to prevent lower level scripters from adding the devices to their botnets. Fortunately, the authors did shut down the malware’s command servers, though the already-distributed samples will continue their operations until they have been removed by security.

Webroot DNS Protection: Now Leveraging the Google Cloud Platform

Jun 27, 2019 | Business + Partners, Managed Service Providers, Threat Lab

We are excited to announce Webroot® DNS Protection now runs on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Leveraging GCP in this way will provide Webroot customers with security, performance, and reliability.

Security

Preventing denial of service (DoS) attacks is a core benefit of Webroot DNS Protection. Now, the solution benefits from Google Cloud load balancers with built-in DoS protection and mitigation, enabling the prevention of attack traffic before it ever hits the agent core.

“The big thing about Google Cloud is that it dynamically manages denial of service (DoS) attacks,” said Webroot Sales Engineer Jonathan Barnett. “That happens automatically, and we know Google has that figured out.”

Click here to learn why businesses need DNS protection.

Performance

With this release, Webroot DNS Protection now runs on the Google Cloud’s high-redundancy, low-latency networks in 16 regions worldwide. That means there’s no need for a Webroot customer in Australia to have a DNS request resolved in Los Angeles, when more convenient infrastructure exists close by.

“Google Cloud provides the ability to scale by adding new regions or new servers whenever necessary as load or need determines, nationally or internationally,” said Barnett. “This allows us to provide geolocation-appropriate answers for our customers, maximizing performance.”

Reliability

Because of GCP’s global infrastructure footprint, Webroot can quickly and easily provision more of Google’s servers in any region to ensure latency times remain low.

And because those regional deployments can be programmed to auto-scale with spikes in traffic, even drastically increasing loads won’t increase wait times for requests.

According to Barnett, “Even if Webroot were to take on a large number of customers in a short time period, say with the closing of a deal to offer DNS solutions to an enterprise-level client with a number of subsidiaries, our environments would automatically scale with the additional load.”

One more note on the release

Another key feature of the April DNS agent update regards switching communications from port 53, which is typically associated with DNS requests, to port 443, which is more commonly associated with SSL certificates.

The reason for this change is that, given port 443’s relevance to routine requests like banking sites and those accepting payment information, it is rarely constrained, modified, or controlled. This will reduce the need to configure firewalls or make other admin adjustments in order for Webroot DNS Protection to function as intended.

It’s good to be in good company

With Webroot DNS Protection now leveraging the GCP will power your network-level protection. Fewer outages, latency, and bottlenecks. Ready to experience Webroot DNS Protection for yourself? Try it free for 30-days here.

Cyber News Rundown: GPS Vulnerabilities in Tesla Vehicles

Jun 21, 2019 | Industry Intel

Multiple Tesla Models Vulnerable to GPS Attacks

Though it’s not the only manufacturer to offer GPS navigation in their vehicles, Tesla has once again suffered an attack on their GPS autopilot features. These attacks were able to trick the car into thinking it had arrived at an off-ramp more than two miles early, causing it to start to merge and eventually turn off the road entirely, even with a driver attempting to stop the action. Using off-the-shelf products, the test conductors were able to gain control of Tesla’s GPS in less than a minute.

Oregon DHS Successfully Phished

The personally identifiable information for at least 645,000 Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) patients was illicitly accessed after a successful phishing attack on nine DHS employees. The attack allowed the hackers to obtain 2 million emails from the accounts, which contained everything from names and birthdates to social security numbers and confidential health information. Fortunately, the DHS issued a password reset shortly after the initial breach that stopped the attackers from getting any further and began contacting potential victims of the attack.

IP and Computer Blacklisting in New Ryuk Variant

The latest variant of the Ryuk ransomware includes an IP blacklist and a computer name check prior to beginning encryption. The IPs and computer name strings were likely implemented to stop any encryption of Russian computer systems. After these checks, the ransomware continues as normal using .RYK as the appended file extension and a ransom note that points victims to make payments to one of two proton mail accounts.

EatStreet Ordering Services Breached

A data breach is affecting the food ordering service EatStreet and possibly all of its 15,000 partnered restaurants. Payment card information for millions of customers using the app, along with some banking information for the 15,000 business partners, is believed to have been compromised in the breach. Though EatStreet quickly began improving their security and implementing multi-factor authentication following the breach, the damage was already done.

Fake System Cleaners on the Rise

While phony system cleaner apps have been common for many years, a recent study shows that user numbers for these apps has doubled from the same time last year to nearly 1.5 million. These apps often appear innocent and helpful at the outset, while others have begun taking an outright malicious approach. To make matters worse, these apps are commonly installed to fix the very issues they later create by slowing the computer down and causing annoying popups.

Cyber News Rundown: Radiohead Hit by Ransomware Hack

Jun 14, 2019 | Industry Intel

Radiohead Refuses Ransom, Releases Stolen Tracks

The band Radiohead recently fell victim to a hack in which 18 hours of previously unreleased sessions were ransomed for $150,000. Rather than pay the ludicrous fee, the band instead opted to release the tracks through Bandcamp for a donation to charity. The unreleased sessions were stored as archived mini discs the band created during the years surrounding their third album, “OK Computer.”

US Border Protection Breached by Contractor

A subcontractor for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is under scrutiny after it was revealed that they had illicitly transferred thousands of images of both license plates and travelers that had crossed the US/Mexico border in the last month. In doing so, the subcontractor broke several mandatory security policies written into a legal contract. While there is no sign of the images leaking onto the dark web, there is very little redress for the exposed travelers without proving actual harm.

Billions of Spam Emails Sent Everyday

The latest industry report on spam emails revealed that around 3.4 billion fake/spam emails are distributed across the globe each day. More worrisome is that the majority of these emails originate in the US and regularly target US-based industries. While many industries have improved security measures, larger enterprises have struggled to implement strong protection for their entire staff.

Ransomware Hits Washington Food Bank

The Auburn Food Bank in the State of Washington recently fell victim to a ransomware attack that encrypted all but one of their computers, which was isolated from the internal network. Instead of paying the ransom, the nonprofit chose to wipe all computers, including their email server, and begin rebuilding from scratch. The ransomware variant has been claimed to be GlobeImposter 2.0, which requires the victim to contact the attacker to determine the ransom demanded.

Retro Game Site Breached

The account information was leaked for over 1 million users of EmuParadise, a retro gaming site that hosts all things gaming related. The breach, which took place in April of 2018, affected 1.1 million IP and email addresses, many of which were found in previous data breaches. It is still unclear how the breach actually took place, though given the use of salted MD5 hashes for storing user data it’s clear EmuParadise could have done more to properly secure their users information.

Cyber News Rundown: Medical Testing Service Data Breach

Jun 7, 2019 | Industry Intel

Quest Diagnostics Customers Affected by Third-Party Breach

The medical testing organization Quest Diagnostics has fallen victim to a third-party data breach that could affect nearly 12 million of their patients. AMCA, a collections agency that works with Quest Diagnostics, noticed unauthorized access to their systems over an eight-month period from August of last year through March 2019. The majority of data targeted were Social Security Numbers and other financial documents, rather than patient’s health records. The market offers a premium for such data.

Adware Installed by Millions of Android Users

Until recently, there were over 230 apps on the Google Play store that had been compromised by a malicious plugin that forced out-of-app advertisements on unsuspecting victims. Globally, over 440 million individuals have installed at least one of these compromised applications and have been affected by overly-aggressive advertisements. While this SDK has been used legitimately for nearly a year, sometime during 2018 the plugin began performing increasingly malicious behaviors, until other developers caught on and began updating their own applications to remove the plugin.

Chinese Database Exposes Millions of Records

A database belonging to FMC Consulting, a headhunting firm based in China, was recently found by researchers to be publicly available. Among the records are resumes and personally identifiable information for millions of individuals, as well as company data with thousands of recorded messages and emails. Unfortunately for anyone whose information is contained within this database, in the two weeks since being notified of the breach FMC has yet acknowledge the breach or take steps to secure it.

Restaurant Payment Systems Infected

Customer who’ve patronized either Checkers or Rally’s restaurants in recent months are being urged to monitor their credit cards after the chain announced that they discovered card stealing malware on their internal systems. While not all restaurant locations were affected, the company is still working to determine the extent of the compromised payment card systems and has offered credit monitoring services to customers.

University of Chicago Medicine Server Found Online

Researchers have found a server belonging to University of Chicago Medicine with personal information belonging to more than 1.6 million current and past donors. The data includes names, addresses, and even marital and financial information for each donor. Fortunately, the researcher was quick to inform the university of the unsecured ElasticSearch server and it was taken down within 48 hours.

Cyber News Rundown: Popular News Site Breached

May 31, 2019 | Industry Intel

News Site Suffers Data Breach

Flipboard, a news aggregation site, recently revealed that it’s been the victim of a data breach that could affect many of their more than 100 million active users. Digital tokens were among the compromised data, which could give the attackers further access to other sites, though Flipboard promptly removed or replaced them. At least two separate breaches have been reported by Flipboard, with one occurring in the middle of 2018 and the other in April of this year. Both allowed the attackers nearly unlimited access to databases containing a wealth of user data.

Keylogger Targets Multiple Industries

At least two separate campaigns have been found to be sending malicious emails to industry-leading companies in several different areas of business. Hidden within these emails are two variants of the HawkEye keylogger that perform various malicious activities beyond simply stealing keystrokes from the infected device. By acting as a loader, HawkEye can install additional malware and even contains a script to relaunch itself in case of a system reboot.

Australian Teen Hacks Apple

A teen from Australia was recently in court to plead guilty to two separate hacks on Apple, which he conducted in hopes of gaining a job with the company. While Apple has since confirmed that no internal or customer data was breached, they have chosen leniency after his lawyer made a case for the perpetrator being remorseful and not understanding the full impact of his crimes.

Fake Crypto-wallets Appear on App Store

Several fake cryptocurrency wallets have made their way into the Google Play store following the latest rise in the value of Bitcoin. Both wallets use some form of address scam, by which the user transfers currency into a seemingly new wallet address that was actually designed to siphon off any transferred currency. The second of the two wallets operated under the guise of being the “mobile” version of a well-known crypto-wallet. It was quickly identified as fake due to an inconsistent icon image. Both fake wallets were tied to the same domain and have since been removed from the store.

Ransomware Focuses on MySQL Servers

While the threat of GandCrab is not new, organizations discovered its persistent risk after researchers found it has been refocused on attacking MySQL servers. By specifically targeting the port used to connect to MySQL servers, port 3306, the attackers have had some success, since many admins allow port 3306 to bypass their internal firewalls to ensure connectivity. As GandCrab continues to narrow it’s attack scope, its remaining viable vectors are likely to be even more lucrative given that most organizations are not able to secure everything.

A Chat with Kelvin Murray: Senior Threat Research Analyst

May 25, 2019 | #LifeAtWebroot, Threat Lab

In a constantly evolving cyber landscape, it’s no simple task to keep up with every new threat that could potentially harm customers. Webroot Senior Threat Research Analyst Kelvin Murray highlighted the volume of threats he and his peers are faced with in our latest conversation. From finding new threats to answering questions from the press, Kelvin has become a trusted voice in the cybersecurity industry.

What is your favorite part of working as a Senior Threat Research Analyst?

My favorite part about being a threat researcher is both the thrill of learning about new threats and the satisfaction of knowing that our work directly protects our customers.

What does a week as a Senior Threat Research Analyst look like?

My week is all about looking at threat information. Combing through this information helps us find meaningful patterns to make informed analysis and predictions, and to initiate customer protections. It roughly breaks down into three categories. The first would be “top down” customer data like metadata. The data we glean from our customers is very important and a big part of what we do. The interlinking of all our data and the assistance of powerful machine learning is a great benefit to us.

Next would be “whole file” information, or static file analysis and file testing. This is a slow process but there are times when the absolute certainty and granular detail that this kind of file analysis provides is essential. This isn’t usually part of my week, but I work with some great specialists in this regard.

Last would be news and reports on the threat landscape in general. Risks anywhere are risks everywhere. Keeping up to date with the latest threats is a big part of what I do. I work with a variety of internal teams and try to advise stakeholders, and sometimes media, on current threats and how Webroot fits in. Twitter is a great tool for staying in the know, but without making a list to filter out the useful bits from the other stuff I follow, I wouldn’t get any work done!

What skills have you built in this role?

Customer support taught me a lot in terms of the client, company culture, and dealing with customer requests. By the time I was in business support I was learning the newer console system and more corporate terms. Training on the job was very useful for my move to threat, where I also picked up advanced malware removal (AMR), which is the most hands on you can get with malware and the pain it causes customers. All of that knowledge is now useful to me in my public facing role where I prepare webinars, presentations, interviews, blogs, and press answers about threats in general.

What is your greatest accomplishment in your career at Webroot so far?

Learning the no-hands trick on the scooter we have in the office. And of course my promotion to Senior Threat Research Analyst. I have had a lot of different roles in my time here, but I’m glad I went down the path I did in terms of employment. There’s never a dull moment when you are researching criminal news and trends, and surprises are always guaranteed.

What brought you to Webroot?

I like to say divine providence. But really I had been travelling around Asia for a few months prior to this job. When I got back home I was totally broke and needed a job. A headhunter called me up out of the blue, and the rest is history.

Are you involved in anything at Webroot outside of your day to day work?

Listening, singing and (badly) dancing to music. Dublin is a fantastic place for bands and artists to visit given its proximity to the UK and Europe and the general enthusiasm of concert goers. I do worry that a lot of venues, especially nightclubs, are getting shut down and turned into hotels though. I sing in a choir based out of Trinity College.

Favorite memory on the job?

Heading to (the now closed) Mabos social events with my team. The Mabos collective ran workshops and social and cultural events in a run-down warehouse that they lovingly (and voluntarily) converted down in Dublin’s docklands. Funnily enough, that building is now Airbnb’s European headquarters.

What is your favorite thing about working at Webroot?

The people that I get to work with. I have made many great friendships in the office and still see previous colleagues socially, even those from five or six years ago.

What is the hardest thing about being a Senior Threat Research Analyst?

Prioritizing my time. I can try my hand at a few different areas at work, but if I don’t focus enough on any one thing then nothing gets done. I find everything interesting and that curiosity can get in the way sometimes!

What is your favorite thing to do in Dublin?

Trying new restaurants and heading out to gigs. I’d be a millionaire if I didn’t eat out at lunchtime so much. Dublin is full of great places. I like all kinds of gigs from dance to soul to traditional. The Button Factory is one of the coolest venues we have.

How did you get into the technology field?

I first become interested in technology through messing with my aunt’s Mac back in the early 90s. There were a lot of cool games on her black and white laptop she brought home from a compucentre she worked in, but the one that sticks in my memory was Shufflepuck Café. My dad always had some crazy pre-Windows machines lying around. Things with cartridges or orange text screens running Norton commander.

To learn more about life at Webroot, visit https://www.webroot.com/blog/category/life-at-webroot /.

Cyber News Rundown: Banking Trojan Closes Ohio Schools

May 24, 2019 | Industry Intel

Banking Trojan Shuts Down Ohio School District

After the discovery of the banking Trojan known as Trickbot, an Ohio school district was forced to cancel school since they were unable to fully disinfect the networks before classes resumed the following Monday. Preliminary reports have concluded that no students were responsible for the attack, as it appears to have started its data-gathering on a computer belonging to the district treasurer’s office. In order for classes to resume normally, the IT staff for the district had to re-format nearly 1,000 affected computers.

GetCrypt Spreading Through RIG Exploit Kits

Another ransomware variant, GetCrypt, has been spotted in the wild that spreads itself across systems by redirecting visitors to a compromised website to a separate page hosting an exploit kit. After checking for several Eastern European languages, the ransomware begins encrypting all files on the system and displays a standard ransom note. In addition to removing all available shadow copies from the computer, GetCrypt also appends all encrypted files with a randomized, four-character string based on the CPUID of the device itself.

Google Assistant Logs All Online Purchases

It was recently discovered that Google’s Assistant, released last year, keeps a log of all online purchases for which a receipt was sent to the user’s Gmail account. The “Payments” page on a user’s Google account shows transactions, flight and hotel reservations, and other purchases made up to several years prior, even showing the cost, date, and time of the purchase.

Forbes Joins List of Magecart Victims

It was revealed late last week that Forbes had fallen victim to a Magecart attack possibly affecting anyone who made a purchase on the site during that time. Fortunately, the researcher who discovered the attack quickly notified both Forbes and the domain owner, resulting in a swift removal of the malicious payment card skimmer from the highly-trafficked site. It’s likely that Forbes became a victim after another vendor in their supply chain was compromised.

Australian IT Contractor Arrested for Cryptomining

An IT contractor working in Australia was arrested after being caught running cryptomining software on government-owned computers, which netted him over $9,000 in cryptocurrency. The charges encompass misuse of government systems by making modifications to critical functions and security measures for personal gain while in a position of trust. By making these changes, this contractor could have exposed a much larger portion of the network to malicious actors who take advantage of misconfigured settings to access company data.