Federal prosecutors charged security researcher Marcus Hutchins—better known by his online handle MalwareTech—with four new charges accusing him of creating and promoting malware used to steal financial information. Hutchins, recognized as the person responsible for stopping the spread of the WannaCry ransomware…
A South Carolina facility owned by aerospace and defense contracting giant Boeing was hit by a WannaCry attack on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported, but the company is now trying to tamp down fears that the dreaded ransomware is back on the rise after it was only barely snuffed out last year.
World War III is going to be dumb. It only seems fitting that Bitcoin could get thrown into the mix of dumb reasons why it might get started. When South Korean cryptocurrency exchange YouBit was looted by hackers this week it seemed to be inevitable that North Korea would be at fault, and investigators believe that’s…
Addressing the nation this morning, Department of Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert restated—in some cases word-for-word—the assertions in an op-ed he penned for the Wall Street Journal last night squarely blaming North Korea for the widespread ransomware attack known as WannaCry. Today he revealed DHS’s plan to…
President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, claimed that North Korean hackers were behind this year’s massive, global WannaCry ransomware attack on Monday evening in a Wall Street Journal editorial.
In a BBC radio interview on Friday, British Security Minister Ben Wallace attributed this year’s WannaCry outbreak to the North Korean government. The ransomware attack crippled roughly a third of Britain’s National Health Care trusts, as well as nearly 300 local doctor’s offices, in May.
Famed white hat hacker Marcus Hutchins—better known as “MalwareTech”—was arrested by the FBI yesterday while trying to fly home to the United Kingdom from Las Vegas. The 22-year-old security researcher gained mainstream fame earlier this year as the guy who stopped the destructive WannaCry ransomware from spreading, …
When the WannaCry ransomware attack hit back in May, it was really good at causing chaos but not so great at generating ransom money. Some analysts said that the attackers were amateurish in their methods. If the people behind the malware are as clumsy as they seem, they should be worried, because they recently…
The ‘90s cyberpunk thriller Hackers is used too often to illustrate the fearful future of cyber security, but it’s popular for a reason. The film’s seemingly fictional scenarios keep coming true. Take this week’s global ransomware attack, for instance. It’s a plot twist that would make Matthew Lillard leer at the…
We may never know who the perpetrators of the WannaCry ransomware attack really were. We do know that they utilized an exploit that was part of the NSA’s toolkit. We know that the exploit was leaked by a group called The Shadow Brokers. We know the US government is pointing to North Korea. And new research from…
A week after WannaCry induced worldwide panic, another vicious ransomware attack is currently underway.
It’s been a dizzying few days for news about hackers demanding ransom. It’s hard to tell which events are connected. But according to multiple reports, hackers are threatening to leak a major film owned by Disney, and sources tell Deadline that the movie is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Tell No Tales.
As a second wave of the WannaCry Ransomware attack is infecting more systems in more countries, the White House has ordered emergency meetings to deal with a threat that is, in part, the NSA’s fault. Experts believe that we may not even know the extent of how hard the attack hit Asia, and we won’t know until Monday.
The WannaCry ransomware attack that spread around the globe yesterday caused chaos at hospitals, manufacturing shutdowns, headaches for Microsoft, and overtime for cybersecurity professionals. But the hackers responsible for this absurd attack have made relatively little in the way of profits.
An anonymous 22-year-old security researcher who goes by MalwareTech has, at least temporarily, managed to find a kill switch for the ransomware that spread across the globe yesterday. He insists his discovery was entirely accidental but experts credit his quick action for mostly stopping the malware from spreading to…
