Police Chief Will Cunningham came to work four years ago to find that his six-officer department was the victim of a crime. Hackers had taken advantage of a weak password to break in and encrypt the files of the department in Roxana, a small town in Illinois near St. Louis, and were demanding $6,000 of […]
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A cyberattack on a critical U.S. pipeline is sending ripple effects across the economy, highlighting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the nation’s aging energy infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel used along the Eastern Seaboard, shut down Friday after a ransomware attack by gang of criminal hackers that calls itself DarkSide. Depending […]
A very strange thing happened on the internet the day President Joe Biden was sworn in. A shadowy company residing at a shared workspace above a Florida bank announced to the world’s computer networks that it was now managing a colossal, previously idle chunk of the internet owned by the U.S. Department of Defense. That […]
The Justice Department is taking new aim at ransomware after a year that officials say was the costliest on record for the crippling cyberattacks. Formation of a task force of FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors is an acknowledgment of the growing threat posed by ransomware attacks, in which hackers lock up computer data and […]
A global epidemic of digital extortion known as ransomware is crippling local governments, hospitals, school districts and businesses by scrambling their data files until they pay up. Law enforcement has been largely powerless to stop it. One big reason: Ransomware rackets are dominated by Russian-speaking cybercriminals who are shielded — and sometimes employed — by […]
The U.S. Cyber Command conducted more than two dozen operations aimed at thwarting interference in last November’s presidential election, the general who leads the Pentagon’s cyber force said Thursday. Gen. Paul Nakasone did not describe the nature of the operations in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee but said they were designed “to get […]
The Justice Department has charged a Swiss hacker with computer intrusion and identity theft, just over a week after the hacker took credit for helping to break into the online systems of a U.S. security-camera startup. An indictment against 21-year-old Till Kottmann was brought Thursday by a grand jury in the Seattle-based Western District of […]
China on Friday put on trial one of two Canadians held for more than two years in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive. Canada said its consular officials were refused permission to attend the proceedings against Michael Spavor, who is accused by China of stealing state secrets. Jim Nickel, the […]
Twitter has filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, claiming the Republican used his office to retaliate against it for banning the account of former President Donald Trump following the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Days after the deadly January insurrection, Paxton announced an investigation into Twitter and four other major technology companies […]
The Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global hacks, including a destructive attack targeting an American movie studio, and in the attempted theft and extortion of more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The newly unsealed indictment builds off an earlier criminal […]