Page 16 - Threat Intelligence 11-15-2019

Officials in New Jersey Reluctant to Publicize Cyberattacks. Cybercrime continues to explode nationwide,
according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most recent internet crime report. Last year, federal
authorities received more than 350,000 complaints involving internet-based fraud, an increase of 16.7 percent
over the previous year. Victim losses across the country in 2018 related to cybercrime totaled $2.71 billion. In
New Jersey, more than 8,400 victims across the state — including businesses, individuals, and government
agencies — reported overall cybercrime losses last year of $79.7 million, making the state ninth in the nation
for such high-tech theft, the FBI reported. “Nobody wants to acknowledge they’ve been victimized,” said Marc
Pfeiffer, assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University, of the
radio silence. Nobody is going to call a press conference to announce someone made off with taxpayer funds,
he said. Maples, meanwhile, believes that what is happening is only going to get worse.

Source: https://www.govtech.com/security/Officials-in-New-Jersey-Reluctant-to-Publicize-
Cyberattacks.html

Ransomware forces New Mexico school district to scrub 30,000 devices. A New Mexico school district that
had its systems infected by ransomware last month is now having to scrub the hard drives of about 30,000
devices, district officials announced Thursday. At a news conference held by the Las Cruces Public School
District on Thursday, Interim Superintendent Karen Trujillo said the cyberattack has kept the district’s 39
schools offline since the malware was detected on Oct. 29. School officials said they did not engage with their
attacker, Las Cruces Sun News reported, and so recovery will consist of reformatting the hard drives of
thousands of desktop computers, laptops and other devices and then reinstalling operating systems.

Source: https://edscoop.com/ransomware-forces-new-mexico-school-district-scrub-30000-devices/

Ransomware attack at Mexico's Pemex halts work, threatens to cripple computers. A ransomware attack hit
computer servers and halted administrative work on Monday at Mexican state oil firm Pemex, according to
employees and internal emails, in hackers’ latest bid to wring ransom from a major company. Hackers have
increasingly targeted companies with malicious programs that can cripple systems overseeing everything from
supply chains to payments to manufacturing, removing them only after receiving substantial payments. An
internal email seen by Reuters said Pemex was targeted by “Ryuk,” a strain of ransomware that experts say
typically targets companies with annual revenue between $500 million and $1 billion. Pemex said in a
statement late on Monday that attempted cyber attacks the day before were “neutralized” in a timely matter
and affected less than 5% of its computers.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-pemex/ransomware-attack-at-mexicos-pemex-
halts-work-threatens-to-cripple-computers-idUSKBN1XM041

Visa Warns of New JavaScript Skimmer 'Pipka’. A new JavaScript skimmer targets data entered into the
payment forms of ecommerce merchant websites, Visa Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD) warns. Dubbed Pipka,
the skimmer was discovered on an ecommerce website previously infected with the JavaScript skimmer
known as Inter, but it has infected at least sixteen other merchant websites as well. What sets Pipka apart
from other skimmers is the fact that it has the ability to remove itself from the compromised HTML code after
execution, in an effort to avoid detection, Visa notes in a security alert (PDF). The skimmer allows operators to
configure the form fields to be parsed and extracted from the targeted checkout pages, including payment
account number, expiration date, CVV, and cardholder name and address. Before execution, the code checks
for these configured fields.

Source: https://www.securityweek.com/visa-warns-new-javascript-skimmer-pipka

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