Guard.me Insurance Provider Suffers Data Breach

Last week, insurance provider, Guard.me, announced they had discovered illicit activity on their website and had to take several of their systems offline. While the company has confirmed that they have fixed the vulnerability that allowed attackers to access the site, they have also revealed that a substantial amount of customer data was exposed during the breach. The company has begun contacting customers who may have been affected and is working towards improving their overall security.

Darkside Group Cashes out over $90 Million

After less than a year operating as a Ransomware-as-a-Service, the Darkside group seems to have taken their earnings and quietly disappeared, following the controversial Colonial pipeline attack. In a mere 9 months, the group was able to extort roughly $90 million in ransom payments from 47 different victims, with $20 million of that coming in February 2021 alone. The same group will likely return in the future using a different name and possibly some new tactics.

AXA Insurance Faces DDoS Threats

Following a ransomware attack that may have compromised several terabytes of data from AXA insurance branches across the globe, the company is now also facing threats of DDoS attacks if they fail to pay the ransom. Most of the stolen data is highly sensitive patient information. With a timeframe of only 10 days to make the payment, the group is hoping for a rushed decision. This attack may have been precipitated by AXA’s recent decision to cease reimbursement for customers who paid ransoms to retrieve their data.

Irish Health Services Bombarded by Conti Ransomware

Over the past week, both the Irish Department of Health (DoH) and Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) fell victim to ransomware attacks from the Conti group. Interestingly, although the servers were breached and the ransomware payloads were dropped, the encryption portion of the payloads appears to have been caught by antivirus software and removed before it could encrypt the systems. This attack has forced both the DoH and the HSE to take their systems offline temporarily to prevent the infection from spreading and causing further damage.

Europe sees spike in Bizarro trojan attacks

After years of causing havoc in Brazil, the Bizarro banking Trojan has been on a significant upward trajectory. More than 70 banks throughout South America and Europe have already fallen victim. Bizarro spreads through malicious email campaigns and begins its attack by killing all current browser processes and waiting for the user to re-open the session and re-enter any credentials for banking websites or other vital sites.