Tag Archive for: stress

Hamas, Iranian hackers seek to leverage Israeli people’s stress


Tel Aviv [Israel], December 19 (ANI/TPS): The Israel National Cyber Directorate announced on Monday that Iran and Hezbollah were behind an attempted cyberattack on the Ziv Medical Centre in Safed in late November. “The attack was thwarted before it could successfully disrupt hospital operations and impact citizens’ medical treatment,” the INCD stated. “However, the attackers managed to extract private data stored in the hospital’s systems.”

While the INCD defends Israeli civilian and government cyberspace, including hospitals, and Internet and phone service providers, military cybersecurity is a very different matter, according to Alon Arvatz, CEO and co-founder of Stealth Startup. Most computers with any sensitive information are not connected to the Internet, and Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza aren’t allowed to carry cell phones for fear of exposing their locations or other sensitive data, Arvatz told the Tazpit Press Service in an interview last month.

“We read the frustrations from their families, saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with my son, or wife or child.’ So it’s heartbreaking,” he said. “But from a security perspective, it means very good things about the army and how it handles it. The worst thing that can happen is that a soldier would accidentally expose his location and the plans of the army.” On Oct. 7 and since, there has been widespread speculation about how Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel in such large numbers, as well as how they were able to murder, torture and kidnap so many Israelis and others. Despite Israel’s reputation as one of the world’s cyberspace superpowers, Hamas appears to have sought to sabotage Israel’s vaunted rocket-alert system and siphon off donations intended for Oct. 7 victims, Arvatz told TPS.

Hackers Leveraging People’s StressParallel to Hamas’s ground invasion, the terrorists also launched “attacks into cyberspace, targeting various civilian and governmental targets,” said Arvatz, a veteran of the Israel Defense Force’s elite cyber Unit 8200 and author of The Battle for Your Computer: Israel and the Growth of the Global Cyber-Security Industry. Hamas’s multi-pronged attack–from land, sea, air and cyberspace–sought to…

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Hackers prey on public schools, adding stress amid pandemic | Health


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — For teachers at a middle school in New Mexico’s largest city, the first inkling of a widespread tech problem came during an early morning staff call.

On the video, there were shout-outs for a new custodian for his hard work, and the typical announcements from administrators and the union rep. But in the chat, there were hints of a looming crisis. Nobody could open attendance records, and everyone was locked out of class rosters and grades.

Albuquerque administrators later confirmed the outage that blocked access to the district’s student database — which also includes emergency contacts and lists of which adults are authorized to pick up which children — was due to a ransomware attack.

“I didn’t realize how important it was until I couldn’t use it,” said Sarah Hager, a Cleveland Middle School art teacher.

Cyberattacks like the one that canceled classes for two days in Albuquerque’s biggest school district have become a growing threat to U.S. schools, with several high-profile incidents reported since last year. And the coronavirus pandemic has compounded their effects: More money has been demanded, and more schools have had to shut down as they scramble to recover data or even manually wipe all laptops.

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“Pretty much any way that you cut it, incidents have both been growing more frequent and more significant,” said Doug Levin, director of the K12 Security Information Exchange, a Virginia-based nonprofit that helps schools defend against cybersecurity risk.

Precise data is hard to come by since most schools are not required to publicly report cyberattacks. But experts say public school systems — which often have limited budgets for cybersecurity expertise — have become an inviting target for ransomware gangs.

The pandemic also has forced schools to turn…

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How to Cut Down on Data Breach Stress and Fatigue


If you’re tired of hearing the words ‘data breach’, you’re not alone. It’s looking like 2021 might end up becoming the year with the most ransomware attacks on record. In August, SonicWall reported that the global ransomware attack volume had increased 151% during the first six months of the year compared to H1 2020. The security community witnessed a total of 304.7 million attempted ransomware attacks over the course of that period. That’s up from 304.6 million attack attempts for all of 2020. Those attacks included notable ransomware incidents such as the Colonial Pipeline infection, an incident which disrupted lives by causing gas shortages.

Such growth held steady into the third quarter of the year. According to SonicWall, ransomware attackers registered 190.4 million infection attempts in that time. This attack volume made Q3 2021 the quarter with the highest number of ransomware attacks on record. It almost surpassed the 195.7 million ransomware incidents seen in the first three quarters of 2020. That’s year-over-year growth of 148%, with 470 million ransomware attacks logged through September. SonicWall predicted 714 million ransomware attacks for all of 2021, a 134% increase over 2020.

Data Breach Stress 

News of all these ransomware attacks, not to mention other types of security incidents, are stressing out users. That’s what Kaspersky learned in the process of conducting a 2021 survey. The results of the study reveal that news of data breaches stressed out 69% of respondents. (Americans and Canadians felt that pressure equally.) This figure is less than the 75% of survey participants who felt stressed by data compromise in 2018. After dropping to 68% the following year, those levels of stress remained consistent thereafter.

Meanwhile, 64% of digital users said they felt stressed by news of ransomware attacks in 2021.

In the course of conducting its study, Kaspersky discovered that users felt more stress from data breaches, ransomware and security incidents than they did from other events in their lives. To illustrate, 64% of respondents said that someone breaching their bank accounts would cause them the most stress in…

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Officials stress security of election systems after U.S. reveals new Iranian and Russian efforts


State and local officials hastened to reassure Americans this week that the nation’s election systems are secure after the country’s top intelligence official accused Iran of sending threatening emails to voters in several states and the United States said Russia obtained voter information from at least one county.



a person standing in front of a building: Deputy clerk Rachel Quayle tests a voter assist terminal device at a polling station inside Marquette City Hall in Michigan on Tuesday.


© Salwan Georges/The Washington Post
Deputy clerk Rachel Quayle tests a voter assist terminal device at a polling station inside Marquette City Hall in Michigan on Tuesday.

U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts said the activity did not appear to include penetration of voting systems or access to voter registration databases, or the hacking of equipment that could be tampered with to alter election results.

“Arizona’s voter registration database remains secure,” said C. Murphy Hebert, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office in Arizona, one of the states where Democratic voters reported receiving the threatening emails. “Some information in the voter record is publicly available in Arizona through a public record request, including party registration and, up until recently, emails. We are vigilantly monitoring all election systems.”

Federal and state officials said they have fortified election systems since 2016, when Russian hackers scanned election-related websites and software nationwide for vulnerabilities.

Multiple investigations found that no votes or voting machines were compromised by the Russians four years ago, and election administrators said that even more safeguards are in place now to prevent such an occurrence.

In addition, the threat has further declined this year with the surge of mail voting brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, because the vast majority of Americans are expected to cast paper ballots, which are harder to tamper with and easier to audit and recount, cybersecurity experts said.

Some experts and security advocates, however, said measures implemented since 2016 are insufficient and point to lingering risks such as poorly secured voting equipment and, in some states, the reporting of results from precincts and counties over phone lines. Congressional Democrats have called for…

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