Yet Another Security Blog

A couple of weeks ago 3 Alabama hospitals were struck with ransomware on the same day.  This caused patients to be diverted and surgeries to be postponed or moved to other facilities.  It was disclosed this week they have decided to pay for decryption. -           ThreatPost has this to say about the situation.  They do note that insurance plays a part in deciding to pay without specifically saying that it was an insurance company that made the choice in this case: https://threatpost.com/alabama-hospitals-pay-up-ransomware-attack/148937/ -             Cyware has an article on the hacking techniques that have been seen so far in 2019.  Some highlights: ( https://cyware.com/news/new-hacking-techniques-discovered-in-2019-so-far-3fac14b5 ) -           Ctrl-Alt-LED is a technique to use against air-gapped systems that uses the Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock LED’s on the keyboard to broadcast the target data and a camera to record the pulses.  https://cyware.com/news/new-

A couple of big ransomware events have happened this week.  2 school systems were hit with ransomware and this continues a trend that have seen over 500 schools be hit so far this year.  Depending on the reports you read this number could he over 1000!  Note that in 2018 we had around 119 educational incidents with only 11 being ransomware.  This makes schools second only to local government entities in number of attacks on government entities. ZDNet has a write-up on this:  https://www.zdnet.com/article/over-500-us-schools-were-hit-by-ransomware-in-2019 CBS mentioned it in their reporting on Ransomware this week:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ransomware-attack-621-hospitals-cities-and-schools-hit-so-far-in-2019/ International Business Times talks about how the use of Cyber Insurance might be some of the reason for the uptick:  https://www.ibtimes.com/ransomware-hits-hundreds-us-schools-local-governments-study-2837573 KOCO in OKC talks about it from the standopoint of Guthr