In the latest deliberations on the Data Use and Access Bill in the House of Lords, I set out two amendments to offer well overdue updating to the Computer Misuse Act (CMA) of 1990. In preparing for committee stage of the bill I remain incredibly grateful to everyone involved with the CyberUp campaign, their analysis…
Two amendments to the Data (Access and Use) Bill that would have established a statutory legal defence for security professionals and ethical hackers to protect them from prosecution under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act (CMA) have failed to make it beyond a House of Lords committee hearing after being withdrawn. The 34-year-old CMA broadly defines…
Latest attempt to override UK’s outdated hacking law stalls Read More »
Despite being taken down and humiliated by the National Crime Agency (NCA) coordinated Operation Cronos in February 2024, an unknown individual(s) associated with, or claiming to represent, the LockBit ransomware gang has broken cover to announce the impending release of a new locker malware, LockBit 4.0. In screengrabs taken from the dark web that have…
LockBit ransomware gang teases February 2025 return Read More »
Change appears to be afoot in the threat landscape, according to NCC Group’s latest monthly Threat pulse report for November, which reveals insight into an emergent ransomware strain called Ymir that demonstrates how threat actors are increasingly acting cooperatively. The emergence of a strain of ransomware called Ymir may prove to be prima facie evidence…
Emerging Ymir ransomware heralds more coordinated threats in 2025 Read More »
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has exposed and disrupted two Russian money laundering networks that handled cash stolen by the Ryuk ransomware gang, among others. Operation Destabilise took out the Smart and TGR criminal networks, which besides providing services to cyber criminals also played a key role in drugs and firearms trafficking into the…
NCA takes out network that laundered ransomware payments Read More »
Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has revealed that a shared service operated by itself and Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust was the source of an INC Ransom intrusion that has affected patient data at both hospitals, as well as Royal Liverpool University Hospital. The attack, which came to light on…
Shared digital gateway was source of three NHS ransomware attacks Read More »
Recorded ransomware attack volumes rose by 19% during October 2024 to a total of 468 incidents worldwide, a significant number of them in the US, where the controversial presidential election likely emboldened Russian-speaking threat actors to strike, according to NCC Group’s latest monthly Threat pulse report. Although the full-scale of attempted Russian state interference in…
Geopolitical strife drives increased ransomware activity Read More »
Eighteen months after a major cyber incident in which hundreds of organisations were victimised by a ransomware gang that exploited a zero-day SQL injection vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer file transfer product, multiple new victims have come to light, including tech giant Amazon, which has confirmed that data on more than two million of…
More data stolen in 2023 MOVEit attacks comes to light Read More »
The brutal dismantling of the LockBit ransomware crew and the humiliation of its key players has been one of the most talked about cyber security success stories of the past 12 months, but looking at the raw data, it doesn’t seem to have done much to dissuade cyber criminals. This is according to Secureworks’ 2024…
Secureworks: Ransomware takedowns didn’t put off cyber criminals Read More »
BlackBerry has claimed its cyber security solutions detected and stopped an average of 11,500 unique malware samples every day during the second calendar quarter of 2024, up 53% on the January to March period and one of the highest three-monthly increases ever recorded in the organisation’s network telemetry. The data, contained in the latest edition…
