An international hacker collective wanting to show how monitored we are and how easy surveillance systems are to hack, breached camera-maker Verkada, gaining access to the video systems of all its customers which included hospitals, prisons, schools and police stations, and companies such as Tesla, Cloudflare and others, according to Swiss hacker Tillie Kottmann, who claimed credit on behalf of the collective.
By Milan Sime Martinic
Around 24 hours after being hit by the big malware attack that affected 100 countries, 97% of UK hospitals were back to normal.
There is talk that the computers were breached through a vulnerability in older Microsoft systems which was long ago identified by the NSA and which the NSA included it in its list of cyber weapons. The NSA information was leaked earlier this year.
According to the FBI, ransomware attacks are up 300% since last year.
Most computer infections have the same MO as always: a user clicks on an attachment in an email that installs the malware, or that “patches” aren’t updated on systems when vulnerabilities come to light.
One way to protect computer information: Regularly back it up on an external drive or the cloud — somewhere secure.
Most prominent among the victims: The UK’s National Health Service. Dozens of hospitals and medical centers had to be closed. Treatment was postponed, ambulances diverted. Appointments couldn’t be made because it was too dangerous. Medical workers had no access to important information.
However, some security firms reported that most of the affected computers were in Russia.
It has been reported that the hackers may have used a tool that was a NSA secret before it was leaked to the public earlier this year.
The WannaCry virus that shut down the UK health system this week is still making its rounds. It has now reached 150 countries and is continuing to spread.
It is expected that the hackers behind the ransomware will update it Monday, so it will be even more dangerous.
Computer security experts say that everyone should update their Windows OS, and back up all their data, because the virus is one that doesn’t even need computer users to click anything; it is making its way around the internet searching for Windows that aren’t updated. There is a known vulnerability in Windows that was exposed by an FBI data leak earlier this year. It seems hackers have based WannaCry on this known Windows vulnerability.
When a computer gets infected, all the data on it is encrypted and the owner no longer can access their files until they pay $300 in Bitcoin.