Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

More Than 100,000 Affected by Hack Detected on Dec. 30The New Zealand government is probing a year-end ransomware hack of private healthcare service provider Manage My Health that impacted thousands of patients. Digital extortion group Kazu has claimed responsibility and threatened to leak the data on Jan. 15 unless it receives a $60,000 ransom.

The FBI has seized last night all domains for the BreachForums hacking forum operated by the ShinyHunters group mostly as a portal for leaking corporate data stolen in attacks from ransomware and extortion gangs. [...]

AI-powered ransomware, extortion chatbots, vibe hacking … just wait until agents replace affiliates It's no secret that AI tools make it easier for cybercriminals to steal sensitive data and then extort victim organizations. But two recent developments illustrate exactly how much LLMs lower the bar for ransomware and other financially motivated cybercrime — and provide a glimpse to defenders about what's on the horizon.…

Some Patients Threatened Directly by Hackers; Center to Spend $13.5M on SecurityA Seattle cancer center has agreed to pay $11.5 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit involving a 2023 double-extortion ransomware attack that affected 2.1 million people, with some patients directly threatened by hackers with swatting attacks if they didn't pay a ransom.

Microsoft has published a detailed profile of a native English-speaking threat actor with advanced social engineering capabilities it tracks as Octo Tempest, that targets companies in data extortion and ransomware attacks. [...]

Microsoft has published a detailed profile of a native English-speaking threat actor with advanced social engineering capabilities it tracks as Octo Tempest, that targets companies in data extortion and ransomware attacks. [...]

BlackCat pounces on 7TB of data and theatens to release it Staff at one of the UK's largest hospital groups have spent a nervous week wondering if private data, stolen from their employer's IT systems by a ransomware gang, is going to be splurged online after a deadline to prevent publication passed.…

Enforcing the "double-extortion" technique aka pay-now-or-get-breached emerged as a head-turner last year.  May 6th, 2022 is a recent example

A ransomware gang is taking extortion to a new level by publicly hacking corporate websites to publicly display ransom notes. [...]

Many organizations are already struggling to combat cybersecurity threats from ransomware purveyors and state-sponsored hacking groups, both of which tend to take days or weeks to pivot from an opportunistic malware infection to a full blown data breach. But few organizations have a playbook for responding to the kinds of virtual "smash and grab" attacks we've seen recently from LAPSUS$, a juvenile data extortion group whose short-lived, low-tech and remarkably effective tactics are putting some of the world's biggest corporations on edge.

Similarities have been unearthed between the Dridex general-purpose malware and a little-known ransomware strain called Entropy, suggesting that the operators are continuing to rebrand their extortion operations under a different name