Page 7 - Threat Intelligence 9-3-2019

Regulatory and

Privacy News

Report finds majority of 2019 ransomware attacks have targeted state and local governments -
The majority of ransomware attacks in the U.S. in 2019 have targeted state and local governments,
a report published Wednesday by cybersecurity group Barracuda Networks found. The report
counted a total of 55 ransomware attacks on U.S. state and local government entities between
January and July of 2019. These attacks involve a malicious actor or group encrypting a network and
asking for money, often in the form of bitcoin, to allow the user access. “The team’s recent analysis
of hundreds of attacks across a broad set of targets revealed that government organizations are the
intended victims of nearly two-thirds of all ransomware attacks,” Barracuda wrote in the report.
“Local, county, and state governments have all been targets, including schools, libraries, courts, and
other entities.” The total amount of ransomware incidents documented by the report does not
include the recent spree of 22 attacks on Texas municipalities, many of which were small local
governments.
Source: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/459049-report-finds-majority-of-2019-
ransomware-attacks-have-targeted-state-and

Texas ransomware attacks deliver wake-up call to cities - A recent spree of ransomware attacks in
Texas has highlighted the increasing threat they pose to city governments, with experts warning the
"lucrative" attacks won't go away. The Texas Department of Information Resources has confirmed
that 22 Texas entities, mostly local governments, have been hit by the ransomware attacks that
took place late last week. The department pointed to a “single threat actor” as being responsible
for the attacks, which did not impact any statewide systems. While the agency has refused to
identify which entities were attacked due to an ongoing investigation, the governments of Keene,
Texas and Borger, Texas, announced this week that they were among those impacted, with the
attacks making it difficult for the two towns to handle utility payments from residents.

Source: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/458357-texas-ransomware-attacks-deliver-
wake-up-call-to-cities

Hackers are actively trying to steal passwords from two widely used VPNs - Hackers are actively
unleashing attacks that attempt to steal encryption keys, passwords, and other sensitive data from
servers that have failed to apply critical fixes for two widely used virtual private network (VPN)
products, researchers said. The vulnerabilities can be exploited by sending unpatched servers Web
requests that contain a special sequence of characters, researchers at the Black Hat security
conference in Las Vegas said earlier this month. The pre-authorization file-reading vulnerabilities
resided in the Fortigate SSL VPN, installed on about 480,000 servers, and the competing Pulse
Secure SSL VPN, installed on about 50,000 machines, researchers from Devcore Security Consulting
reported.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/hackers-are-actively-
trying-to-steal-passwords-from-two-widely-used-vpns/

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