Cicada (also known as Cicada3301) is a sophisticated ransomware, written in Rust, that has claimed more than 20 victims since its discovery in June 2024.
Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.
Author: Graham Cluley
What is the Cicada ransomware? Cicada (also known as Cicada3301) is sophisticated ransomware written in Rust that has claimed more than 20 victims since its discovery in June 2024. Why is the ransomware called Cicada? The criminals behind Cicada appear to have named it after the mysterious Cicada 3301 puzzles posted on the internet between 2012 and 2014, seemingly to recruit highly intelligent individuals. Of course, there is no reason to believe that the ransomware is in any fashion related to the enigmatic puzzles that appeared a decade before it - other than through the name. Fair enough...
There's a whole new dating scam that could mean you end up out of pocket (or beaten up) after a first date with a glamorous admirer, and a woman in Los Alamos uses an Air Tag to entrap a thief.
Plus - don't miss our featured interview with Maya Irvine of Sysdig.
All this, and a very bad Cockney accent, in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by industry veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault.
In episode 14 of "The AI Fix", Graham makes an apology, Mark wonders if suicide drones have second thoughts, people pretend to be robots, and some researchers prove that all you need for an AI to generate a somewhat usable version of the computer game Doom out of thin air is to already have a fully-working copy of the computer game Doom.
Graham learns how to escape from a police sniffer elephant, an AI-generates a smell with no odour, and Mark explains why the world's best LLMs think there are two Rs in "strawberry".
All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of "The AI Fix" podcast by Graham Cluley and Mark Stockley.
A former IT engineer is facing federal charges in the United States after his former employer found it had been locked out of its computer systems and received a demand for $750,000.
Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.
Who doesn't fancy earning US $2.5 million?
That's the reward that's on offer from US authorities for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of the man who allegedly was a key figure behind the development and distribution of the notorious Angler Exploit Kit.
Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.
Who doesn't fancy earning US $2.5 million? That's the reward that's on offer from the US Department and State and Secret Service for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of a Belarusian man who allegedly was a key figure behind the development and distribution of the notorious Angler Exploit Kit. 38-year-old Vladimir Kadariya is charged with a range of cybercrime offences which saw millions of internet users defrauded through malvertising and other means since at least October 2013. The malvertising campaigns were designed to appear legitimate but often redirected victim...
2024 looks set to be the highest-grossing year yet for ransomware gangs, due - in no small part - to emboldened cybercriminals causing costly disruption at larger companies.
Read more in my article on the Exponential-e blog.
Hackers who seized control of the official Instagram account of McDonald's claim that they managed to steal US $700,000 from unsuspecting investors by promoting a fake cryptocurrency.
Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.
A phishing exercise conducted by the IT department of the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) has backfired, after causing unnecessary panic amongst students and staff.
Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.