A notorious ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack against Vesuvius, the London Stock Exchange-listed molten metal flow engineering company.
Category: Vice Society
In what appears as a serious threat to students from 14 schools based in UK, a hacking group named Vice Society posted about 550 GB of data online belonging to school pupil that includes sensitive info like pupil passport scams, pay scales of staff, their contract details and Children’s Special Educational Needs(SEN) info.
It’s believed that the hackers got hold of the data from a ransomware attack that was launched on educational institutions in UK and US last year and as the victims failed to pay the demanded ransom, the information was leaked online to fetch monetary gains.
According to a source from BBC, the mass data leak is related to the schools & educational institutes listed below-
-
Carmel College, St. Helens,
-
Francis King School of English, London
-
Gateway College, Hamilton, Leicester
-
Durham Johnston Comprehensive School
-
Holy Family RC+CE College, Heywood
-
Lampton School, Hounslow, London
-
Mossbourne Federation, London
-
Pilton Community College of Barnstaple
-
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
-
Samuel Ryder Academy, St Albans
-
St Pauls Catholic College, Sunbury-on-Thames
-
Test Valley School, Stockbridge
-
The De Montfort School, Evesham
All the affected institutions have already informed their staff, students and their parents about the incident and have informed the law enforcement to investigate the attack deeply.
NOTE 1- FBI issued a warning in September 2022 that Vice Society was launching attack campaigns on educational institutions and is after stealing their sensitive information.
NOTE 2- Vice Society is a ransomware spreading group that is after healthcare units and educational organizations. Apparently, they are reported to be funded by Russian intelligence and primarily targeted those operating in the United Kingdom and the United States. Los Angeles Unified School District(LAUSD) was one of their prime targets last year and CISA confirmed that the said group of cyber criminals developed tools such as Zeppelin Ransomware and Hello Kitty or Five Hands.
The post Vice Society posts student data of 14 Britain Schools appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence Team has made it official that Vice Society, a hacking group, is behind multiple ransomware attacks that were being targeted at education, government and retail sectors. It was also found in the research that the said group of cyber criminals avoids deployment of ransomware sometimes and carried out extortion with stolen data.
The Windows OS delivering giant claims that the said group of cyber attackers has been code named by its team as Moniker DEV-0832 and has a history of dumping payloads related to quantum locker, Zeppelin, BlackCat and Hive Ransomware.
Another company serving the field of cybersecurity named SEKOIA also observed a similar concept behind the operations of Vice Society and released an update on this note in July 2022. It claims that the said group of hackers do not involve in double extortion tactics and instead focus on deploying ransomware binaries that are being bought the dark web.
Sometimes, the crime group spreads the file encrypting malware through publicly known vulnerabilities and, in most cases, it drops the malware payloads via phishing emails.
Victim names are not being disclosed for reasons, but are related to mostly education sector says report compiled and released by the MS Office software producing tech giant.
NOTE- In case a company falls prey to ransomware, it is better to avoid paying a ransom. As there is no guaranty that the criminals will return the decryption key for sure and there is a high probability that they can strike the same target twice or thrice in a year to mint easy money.
The post Vice Society launched multiple ransomware attacks appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
Hackers have leaked data stolen from the United States's second-largest school district, after the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced it would not be giving in to ransom demands.
Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a public statement warning residents about a Ransomware spread being made by a notorious hacking firm named Vice Society. The law enforcement agency has warned the citizens of the United States not to fall prey to the ransomware campaigns launched by the said group of threat actors known to target schools & educational institutes in the country.
As most of the educational institutions are being targeted by Vice Society, the FBI issued a joint statement association with CISA of personal data theft and unauthorized access of computer networks leading to data steal of students, teachers, employees and syllabus.
FBI also added in its statement that it will work closely with Microsoft and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis centre (MS-ISAC) and will be closely monitoring BTC transaction details, IP addresses, and ransom notes that will help track down cyber criminals.
Vice Society exploits online systems by using tools such as Cobalt Strike, SystemBC, and PowerShell Empire.
So, the IT staff managing the infrastructure of educational institutions are being urged to step- up their Cybersecurity efforts by using FA, backing up information, keeping a tab on all 3rd party operations, and thwarting phishing attempts by educating staff on how to avoid troubles in the latest online scenarios.
NOTE- FBI, in association with Interpol, recovered around $2.3 million from the total ransom of $4.4 million paid by Colonial Pipeline to ransomware spreading gangs. Similarly, a Netherlands-based law enforcement agency recollected the total sum of $200k paid to recover data related to Maastricht University in 2019. As the total sum was paid in BTC and the recovered sum will fetch as the bitcoin rate is high when compared to 2019, the extra sum recovered will bolster security efforts of the University, to avoid such digital embarrassments, in the future.
The post FBI issues serious cyber threat alert about Vice Society appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
A ransomware gang that has been increasingly disproportionately targeting the education sector is the subject of a joint warning issued by the FBI, CISA, and MS-ISAC.
Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.
A cyber gang has leaked data of thousands of British school pupils online and is also threatening to add more to the list, as almost all the 6 victims have chosen not to entertain the cyber criminals.
Information is out that sensitive details such as passport numbers of children, their identity related documents, disciplinary statements, and child protection reports were accessed and stolen by hackers last month.
As the victims, say 5 schools and a college have chosen not to pay a ransom, Vice Society, a well-known gang of cyber criminals, has sold data on the dark web.
Stolen files include digital papers from The De Montfort School, Evesham, Worcestershire, and some pupils from Pilton Community College in Barnstaple, Devon.
Cybersecurity Insiders has also learned from its scribes that the accessed data includes information that was classed as vulnerable and studying from home during the pandemic crisis of COVID-19.
In the past few weeks, the Vice Society tried to establish a contact with its victims to extort money. However, none of them responded to the group of cyber criminals positively and so it sold the siphoned data on the web.
NCSC has received a report of the incident and is investigating it to the core. All the victims are taking the help of third party security firms and IT services to restore the systems and have assured that they will take all measures to mitigate such cyber risks in the future.
The post Hackers leak data of thousands of British School Pupils appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.