Menacing ransomware called Jigsaw threatened to delete thousands of files an hour if victims didn’t pay 0.4 Bitcoins or $150. Worse, restarting your PC, according to the attackers, would also cost victims 1,000 deleted files. The icing on the cake was a menacing image of “Billy the Puppet” from the horror movie franchise Saw and...

The Qbot malware is back and hard at work again with infections reported on 54,517 machines, according to researchers at BAE Systems—with 85 percent of those impacted systems residing in the United States. Qbot’s latest incarnation has learned new tricks since its early days in 2009, and is riling security professionals with its ability to evade...

The FBI issued a rare bulletin admitting that a group named Advanced Persistent Threat 6 (APT6) hacked into US government computer systems as far back as 2011 and for years stole sensitive data. The FBI alert was issued in February and went largely unnoticed. Nearly a month later, security experts are now shining a bright...

MIAMI—Defense may win football championships, but it gets steamrolled in computer security arenas. “A dollar of offense beats a dollar of defense,” said Nate Fick, CEO of Endgame Inc., on Thursday during his keynote address at Infiltrate Conference. Fick’s talk in front of an audience of exploit engineers and offensive security specialists painted a grim...

Turkey’s communications minister this week is denying reports that personally identifiable information of 50 million of the country’s citizens has been leaked online. On Monday hackers published what they claim is a Turkish citizenship database, a cache of information downloadable via BitTorrent, that allegedly includes details on 49,611,709 individuals. The information includes citizens’ names, national identification numbers,...

Researchers warn hundreds of popular Firefox browser extensions are vulnerable to attack that could give hackers control of Mac OS X and Windows computers. Researchers from Northeastern University say the flaw is tied to Firefox’s support for an older browser extension platform and the Mozilla Foundation’s plug-in vetting process for its Firefox browser. Researchers presented...

The American Civil Liberties Union has dug up more proof that from the get-go the FBI’s attempt to crack open an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was not just about the one phone. The ACLU found court documents and on Wednesday published an interactive map visualizing the Justice Department’s 63 requests through the courts since 2008...

Wall Street-savvy hackers are behind a data breach that involves a who’s-who of New York City legal firms. Federal investigators are looking into the breach that included Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, both high-profile New York-based law firms. Cravath Swaine & Moore said told Threatpost its computer networks were infiltrated...

When the Internet’s root name servers are in the line of fire of a DDoS attack, people start to sweat, and with good reason since they are the authoritative servers used to resolve IP addresses. The most recent attacks against the root servers happened over a two-day period starting last Nov. 30, and impacted services...

Portions of the hospital chain MedStar Health remain offline Wednesday as a result of a major malware attack that occurred Monday and crippled the hospital’s computer systems and forced one of the largest healthcare providers in Maryland and Washington, D.C. to turn patients away. The healthcare provider said the attack forced it to shut down its...