Malware

Following the discovery of unusual activity on police department computers, officials called in a cybersecurity firm to identify the source of the issue. Town officials do not believe any data was breached in the incident.

More attackers are stealing data and threatening to leak it without the complicated work of locking up files first, finds CrowdStrike’s Global Threat Report. Plus, attackers are getting around patches to re-exploit vulnerabilities.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials report that as many as 2,000 student records were posted on the dark web as a result of a recent cyber attack. Some of the exposed records were more than three decades old.

A new report and toolkit aims to help K-12 schools and school districts identify funding and low-cost resources, identify high-priority risk reduction steps and stay informed about emerging cyber threats and risks.  

The proposed center would provide public entities with cyber solutions, develop the cyber workforce and deliver training and awareness across sectors. Efforts to pass this measure in 2022 ran out of time; a new House bill revives the question.

Nineteen percent of software scanned in the past year showed a “high or critical severity” security flaw, according to Veracode’s State of Software Security 2023 report. Issues also appear to be fixed less often in older software.

The vendor supplying Lawrence County, Ohio’s records management system was hit with a cyber attack Dec. 26. The incident caused service disruptions when company systems were taken offline to identify the source of the attack.

The New York county’s online record management system has been restored following a cyber attack against third-party vendor Cott Systems. The system was taken offline around Christmas to hunt for the source of the attack.

The third-party vendor for the county’s online record management system alerted officials Monday that it detected potentially malicious files and would be shutting down its servers to find the source of the problem.

The number of cyber attacks on schools has been ramping up, with schools facing off against ransomware, DDoS attacks and other threats. Luckily, a number of resources can help them bolster their defenses.

During a recent Brookings Institute event, a former FCC chair and a former chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said that features that make 5G compelling also create different kinds of cybersecurity risks to address.

Gov. Charlie Baker has created the Cyber Incident Response Team in a Dec. 14 executive order. The group will be comprised of members from state government public safety and cybersecurity organizations.

The city of Dallas has released a mobile app to help residents navigate potential threats to their smartphones. The tool blocks phishing texts, guards against malicious app downloads and warns against connecting to unsafe networks.

Global tensions are prompting state and local governments to deepen focus on their abilities to prevent, withstand and recover from cyber incidents, and many are particularly concerned about risks to sensitive data, according to a new report.

Hackers often seek to penetrate a network and then escalate their privileges until they can access — and exfiltrate — sensitive data or widely deploy malware. That makes Active Directory security essential.

A Workforce Safety & Insurance employee opened a malicious email attachment — an incident that led to cyber attackers accessing personal data on 182 individuals who had been seeking injured employee claims.

An incident response team is piecing together the details of a cyber attack against the Fremont County systems. Officials were alerted to the malicious activity last Wednesday and have launched a full investigation into the incident.

The Bellingham Public Library reported that a “limited number” of patrons were impacted by the recent cyber attack against the Whatcom County Library System. Officials say 735 patrons were affected.