Computer systems in 23 small Texas towns have been hacked, seized and held for ransom in a widespread, coordinated cyberattack, the authorities said this week. The Texas Department of Information Resources said Monday that it was racing to bring systems back online after the “ransomware attack,” in which hackers remotely block access to important data […]
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For most of our lives, we have been conditioned to share a piece of personal information without a moment’s hesitation: our phone number. We punch in our digits at the grocery store to get a member discount or at the pharmacy to pick up medication. When we sign up to use apps and websites, they […]
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The software engineer accused of stealing the personal information of more than 100 million people from Capital One also obtained data from over 30 companies and other organizations, according to federal prosecutors. In a court filing Tuesday, prosecutors said they found multiple terabytes of stolen data from other companies, educational institutions and other organizations on […]
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In July, Europol celebrated the third anniversary of its No More Ransom initiative, announcing that the public-private partnership had helped more than 200,000 ransomware victims recover their files using its library of freely available online tools instead of giving in to hackers’ demands to pay a cryptocurrency ransom. All told, the recovered files saved victims […]
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Overwhelmed by requests from consumers seeking compensation related to the giant 2017 data breach at the credit bureau Equifax, the Federal Trade Commission is recommending that people accept free credit monitoring rather than cash. In a blog post published on Wednesday, the agency announced that because of the high volume of requests, the F.T.C. would […]
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Large financial companies have to thwart hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks every single day. Data thieves have to get lucky only once. Big banks like Capital One, the victim of a recent attack that captured the personal information of over 100 million people, are a target for digital troublemakers, like individual hackers trying to impress […]
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Before she was arrested and accused of illegally obtaining the personal data of over 100 million people from Capital One, Paige Thompson, 33, had a public Twitter persona typical of a software engineer in Seattle. She commented often on programming chatter, fretted about her dating life and mourned the euthanasia of her cat, Millie. Millie’s […]
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In one of the largest thefts of data from a bank, a software engineer in Seattle hacked into a server holding customer information for Capital One and stole millions of credit card applications, federal prosecutors said on Monday. The suspect, Paige Thompson, left a trail online for investigators to follow, according to court documents in […]
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A software engineer in Seattle hacked into a server holding customer data for Capital One and stole millions of credit card applications, federal prosecutors said on Monday. The engineer, Paige Thompson, gained access to 120,000 Social Security numbers and 77,000 bank account numbers, according to court papers, and tried to share the information with other […]
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Some hackers demand ransom; others sweep up personal data for sale to identity thieves. But whatever hackers’ motives, school systems around the country have been the targets of their cyberattacks. One attack forced the Houston County School District in Dothan, Ala., to delay the first day of school for 6,400 students. Others crippled computer systems […]
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Two years after a major data breach exposed the personal information of around 147 million Americans, the credit bureau Equifax has agreed to pay at least $650 million to resolve consumer claims and multiple state and federal investigations stemming from the episode. At least $300 million of that amount will go to consumers, according to […]
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The credit bureau Equifax will pay at least $650 million and potentially significantly more to end an array of state, federal and consumer claims over a data breach two years ago that exposed the sensitive information of more than 148 million people. The breach was one of the most potentially damaging in an ever-growing list […]
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For the Twitter feed of London’s Metropolitan Police, Friday seemed like an ordinary day. It announced some arrests. (Teenagers obstructing a road at a protest.) A man was jailed in a murder case (life, for killing a “friendly pensioner”). Then things started to go sideways. For about 40 minutes, the account spewed messages, some irreverent, […]
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The plan was simple: give the government of Uzbekistan the ability to monitor everyone’s communications. I first heard the story about five years ago from an American defense consultant. I had spoken to him over the years about arms sales, particularly those involving the former Soviet Union. He had been involved in overseeing foreign military […]
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LAKE CITY, Fla. — Audrey Sikes, city clerk of Lake City, Fla., has a thing for documents: She does not like losing them. It falls to Ms. Sikes, as official custodian of records for this city of 12,000 people about an hour west of Jacksonville, to maintain Lake City’s archives. She keeps a log of […]
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Slack is one of many Silicon Valley unicorns going public this year, but it’s the only one that has admitted it is at risk for nation-state attacks. In the S-1 forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Uber, Lyft, Pinterest and Snapchat addressed threats that could lower the price of their stock — including […]
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Just over 10 years ago, a unique strain of malware blitzed the internet so rapidly that it shocked cybersecurity experts worldwide. Known as Conficker, it was and remains the most persistent computer worm ever seen, linking computers with Microsoft operating systems globally, millions of them, to create a vast illicit botnet, in effect, a black-market […]
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A popular Facebook grief support page reclaimed control of its account Thursday after a hacking attack that page administrators say went unaddressed for seven weeks. The case is the latest knock on Facebook’s efforts to monitor content on its platform. The moderators of the page, Grief the Unspoken, which has more than 500,000 followers, said […]
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MIAMI — Even the phones went down in the government of Lake City, Fla., after hackers launched a cyberattack that disabled the city’s computer systems. For several days after computer systems were paralyzed by a ransomware attack, the staff of the small North Florida town worked with the F.B.I. and an outside security consultant to […]
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MIAMI — The leaders of Riviera Beach, Fla., looking weary, met quietly this week for an extraordinary vote to pay nearly $600,000 in ransom to hackers who paralyzed the city’s computer systems. Riviera Beach, a small city of about 35,000 people just north of West Palm Beach, became the latest government to be crippled by […]
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