AT THE BEGINNING of May, a phishing scam flooded the web, disguised as a typical Google Docs request. Some of the emails even appeared to come from acquaintances. If victims clicked through and granted seemingly innocuous permissions, they exposed their entire Gmail account to whoever was behind the scam. It was an explosive scheme. And Google responded in kind. “We convened what we call a war room,” says Mark Risher, Google’s director of counter-abuse technology.Read More

AFTER A HACKED US election covered in Russian fingerprints, it’s easy to assume that Friday’s megaleak of emails from France’s president-elect Emmanuel Macron was the Kremlin’s work, too. Russia, after all, has the motive, the means, and a very fresh track record of meddling in Western elections to sabotage center-left candidates. But this latest breach, for now, lacks conclusive fingerprints—and what few clues there are have only added to the confusion. On Friday, nine gigabytesRead More

Since the WannaCry ransomware ripped through the internet late last week, infecting hundreds of thousands of machines and locking up critical systems from health care to transportation, cryptographers have searched for a cure. Finding a flaw in WannaCry’s encryption scheme, after all, could decrypt all those systems without any ransom. Now one French researcher says he’s found at least a hint of a limited remedy. The fix still seems far from the panacea WannaCry victimsRead More

Healthcare is an industry under siege. This statement was true yesterday and was underscored by today’s massive ransomware attack. Care providers are targeted by cybercriminals with greater frequency than any other organization. And thanks to old equipment and flagging security standards, these attacks find success far more often than they should. Security is no longer just about protecting our data — it’s about protecting our health, our safety and our well-being. Thousands of innocent patientsRead More

A global ransomware attack is holding thousands of computers hostage. Banks, telephone companies and hospitals have all been ensnared in the worldwide hack, with the malware locking down computers while demanding a hefty sum for freedom. The attack has hit thousands of computers across China, Russia, Spain, Italy and Vietnam, but hospitals in England have attracted the most attention because lives are at risk while hospital systems are locked down. As of Sunday morning, moreRead More