Cybersecurity News & Trends

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Hackers made inroads this week with zero-day threats, massive DDoS attacks and point-of-sale compromises — but there were significant wins for the good guys, too.


SonicWall Spotlight

CEO Outlook 2020 – Bill Conner — CRN

  • CRN recently asked 80 of the industry’s top CEOs — including SonicWall’s Bill Conner — why 2020 will be the launch of the data decade.

MSPs will be forced to fix ‘rushed out’ remote working solutions post-COVID – Sonicwall CEO —  Channel Partner Insight

  • In an interview with CPI, Bill Conner explained that as changes to work patterns are likely to outlast the pandemic, pivoting out of lockdown will mean some of the earlier “temporary” remote working solutions will need to be re-engineered.

The Tel Aviv Tech Startups that are Solving COVID-19 Challenges — Forbes

  • Tel Aviv-based Perimeter 81, a provider of network security-as-a-service that recently completed a $10 million Series A led by SonicWall and existing investors, offers solutions that replace traditional VPNs.

Cybersecurity News

FBI warns K-12 schools of ransomware attacks via RDP —  ZDNet

  • The FBI has issued a security alert warning K-12 schools about ransomware gangs abusing RDP connections to break into school systems.

There are DDoS attacks, then there’s this 809 million packet-per-second tsunami Akamai says it just caught —  The Register

  • The attack, which targeted an unspecified European bank, was the largest such attack Akamai had ever encountered — and CDN believes it may be the largest DDoS attack to hit any network, ever.

This ransomware has learned a new trick: Scanning for point of sales
devices
—  ZDNet

  • Already one of the most dangerous forms of ransomware, Sodinokibi now looks like it could be attempting to make money from stolen payment information, too.

FBI sees major spike in coronavirus-related cyber threats — The Hill

  • FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received 20,000 coronavirus-related cyber threat reports this year — as many as they received in all of 2019.

Republicans propose bill to end ‘warrant-proof’ encryption
The Washington Times

  • Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced a bill Tuesday taking on the encryption technology that major tech companies use to secure customer data.

New WastedLocker ransomware demands payments of millions of USD —  ZDNet

  • Evil Corp, one of the biggest malware operations on the planet, has returned to life with a new ransomware strain.

Ransomware operators lurk on your network after their attack —  Bleeping Computer

  • While many believe attackers quickly deploy ransomware and leave so they won’t get caught, in reality threat actors are not so quick to give up a resource that they worked so hard to control.

Phishing and cryptocurrency scams squashed as one million emails are reported to new anti-scam hotline —  ZDNet

  • In the two months since its launch, the UK’s new anti-scam hotline has received an average of 16,500 emails per day, resulting in 10,000 links to online scams either blocked or taken down by authorities.

Hacker arrested for stealing, selling PII of 65K hospital employees
Bleeping Computer

  • 29-year-old Justin Sean Johnson has been arrested for allegedly stealing PII and W-2 information for over 65,000 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center employees and selling it on the dark web.

Security surprise: Four zero-days spotted in attacks on researchers’ fake networks —  ZDNet

  • Previously unknown attacks used against fake systems highlight big problems with industrial systems security.

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Amber Wolff
Senior Digital Copywriter | SonicWall
Amber Wolff is the Senior Digital Copywriter for SonicWall. Prior to joining the SonicWall team, Amber was a cybersecurity blogger and content creator, covering a wide variety of products and topics surrounding enterprise security. She spent the earlier part of her career in advertising, where she wrote and edited for a number of national clients.