UK’s largest electronics retailer Dixons Carphone has made an official announcement on Tuesday that around 10 million records containing personal data of its customers could have been obtained in a cyber attack in 2017- which is much higher than the earlier estimates. However, the UK based company which holds a retail network clarified that the leaked records do not contain payment card or bank account details.
Now, to those who are new to this news, here’s a briefing. In June this year, an investigation revealed that one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel Stores was intercepted by hackers who accessed around 5.9 million credit card data. Now, a joint investigation conducted by Britain’s National Crime Agency in association with the National Cyber Security Center says that over 10 million records were breached, but did not contain any financial info.
In another news related to the cyber attack, an extensive research conducted by Sophos has revealed that SamSam Ransomware authors or spreaders have so far succeeded in raising almost $6 million from malware attacks. The research was conducted on how the SamSam ransomware has originated, was being targeted and how it has evolved, since its first appearance in December 2015.
From July 24th this year, an area called Matanushka-Susitna(Mat-Su) located in Borough Anchorage Metropolitan area is said to be suffering from a ransomware attack which disrupted the operations of internet, phones and email services of the government networks. The news is out on an official note that over 650 desktops were infected by the BitPaymer Ransomware and this includes almost 7 servers. Till Tuesday, over 110 workstations were repaired by the IT staff of Mat-Su and some communication systems were reported to have been brought back to life. The staff have received an official announcement from the management to use typewriters and were seen writing receipts by hand and said that this will continue until all the systems in the network are rebuilt.
Mat-Su IT director Eric Wyatt confirmed the news and said that FBI and the local law enforcement agencies were informed about the incident.
The January 2017 ransomware attack on Washington DC’s Police department’s surveillance system is said to have been launched by two Romanians who were planning something big in the attempt. Last Friday, the prosecutors spelled out a statement which says that the two Romanians were intending to send ransomware to more than 179,000 email addressed via the CCTV servers of Washington DC. For those who aren’t aware of this news, here’s a briefing on it. On January 12, 2017 i.e a week before the 45TH president Donald Trump took oak, over 123 surveillance cameras of the DC went dark.
When the US law enforcement started an investigation, it discovered that the online assailants infected 4 storage systems belonging to CCTV servers with ransomware and were demanding a payment of about $60,000 worth of Bitcoins. But in actuality they were planning something big through the attack which was obstructed by the US law enforcement agencies on time. Both the accused were arrested by the Romania police last December and both confessed to the fact that they were also behind the spread of Cerber ransomware.
