Security News for the Week Ending October 4, 2019

Just a Wee Bit Over the Top

There is a nut job who bought an old cold war era bunker in Germany and turned it into a “bullet-proof” hosting center similar to what we see in Russia and elsewhere – where they let you host anything, legal or otherwise.

Apparently the Germans got tired of this guy, who calls himself HRH Prince Sven Olaf of CyberBunker-Kamphuis and thinks he runs his own country.

The overkill part is that they sent in 600 paramilitary troops to arrest him and a dozen of his employees who were this bunker.  I wonder how much that cost them.  Source: The Register

Hacker GnosticPlayers Steals User Info From Zynga – 218 million people

This guys seems to be on a mission.  After stealing about a BILLION (yup, that’s right) userids already, he just added 200+ million Zynga gamers to the mix.  While the information isn’t super sensitive, this points to how weak security is in many places.  Source: The Hacker News

Demant Hearing Aids Expects to Spend $95 Million Due to Ransomware Attack

In case you tend to dismiss ransomware attacks, Demant, the Danish hearing aid manufacturer, says that an unidentified cyber incident will cost them between $80 million and $95 million, due to lost sales as the outage (likely ransomware) impacting shipping, receiving and production.  Source: ZDNet

TEN More Hospitals Hit By Ransomware Attacks

Three hospitals in Alabama and seven more hospitals in Australia have been hit by ransomware.  In the Alabama attacks, ambulances are being redirected to other hospitals and if someone walks into the ER, they will stabilize the patient and transfer him or her elsewhere.

The hospitals in Australia also say that patient services are being affected.  Source: ARS Technica

Baltimore Did Not Have Backups For Key Files

Baltimore lost a lot of key data because it did not have effective backup policies.  Users were storing the only copy of data on their local hard drives.

While it is fun to criticize Baltimore, when is the last time that your company actually tested that you have readable backups for **ALL** of your key data, including and especially, data stored in the cloud.

Baltimore is going to spend about $10 million and lose an additional $8 million in revenue due to the attack.  Source: Dark Reading

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