Security News for the Week Ending February 9, 2024
DEF CON is Canceled, No Really
It is a meme. Every year there are announcements that DEF CON is canceled, but this year it is real. Sort of. DEF CON is the world’s largest hacking convention and has, for years, been held at Caesars in Las Vegas. You may remember that Caesars had an unfortunate situation with hackers last year (ransomware). According to Jeff Moss (AKA Dark Tangent) Caesars is not saying why they canceled them, other than saying they had a strategy change. It appears that they were able to book space at the Las Vegas Convention Center with some overflow at the Sahara. One Caesars employee is reported to have said “we hate you guys – you stay in your rooms and don’t gamble.” The response to that is that we studied math in school. Is that the reason? Is the ransomware attack the reason? At this point, DEF CON, at least at Caesars, is canceled. Credit: The Register
Ransomware Payments More Than Doubled in 2023 to More Than $1 Billion
Claims that ransomware was so last year are, apparently, exaggerated. Chainalysis says that ransomware payments more than doubled last year to $1.1 billion. This is a reversal from 2022 when ransomware payments went down a lot, causing some people to thing that ransomware was over. These numbers are a floor on payments as they may not have all wallets identified. Credit: The Record
Feds Looking at Making Software Developers Liable for Bugs
This is a long way from becoming anything, but the fact that the Office of the National Cyber Director is studying making software companies liable for their messes should be enough to scare the crap out of software makers. And, maybe, enough to get them to work harder to stop bugs. If this actually happens, this is a monumental event for improved security. Credit: The Record
Hackers are Coming for Your Travel Account
Hackers are going after your travel accounts. In one example a person made a reservation for a hotel in Thailand. Then she got an email in broken English that there had been some malicious activity in her account. Then her husband noticed several new reservations that they had not made. Booking.com cancelled all of her reservations, including the legitimate one. They were willing to fix that error, but the replacement reservation was twice the price. This is not an isolated example. If the travel sites contain your credit cards, passports and other sensitive data, that data is also at risk and it doesn’t matter if this is work travel or play travel. Check out some tips to help protect yourself. Credit: USA Today
Is 1111 a Bad Password?
What’s wrong with using 1111 as the password to protect your water distribution systems? It is the default password for an Israeli-made pressure monitoring controller used by American water systems and at least 150 of them still use the default password. Why change the password? The new one might be hard to remember, after all. It may explain why hackers have been able to compromise multiple systems. Credit: Data Breach Today
by 