Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the week in news, including the iPhone encryption debacle, the glibc Linux vulnerability, and the latest ransomware headlines. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_February_19_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

After being knocked offline for nearly two weeks, officials at a California hospital that was hit with ransomware elected on Wednesday to pay attackers. The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (HPMC) shut down computers on its network on Feb. 5, after attackers allegedly asked for 9,000 Bitcoin, or just over $3 million USD, to unlock medical...

It’s been difficult to keep track of all the different strains of ransomware that have plagued users over the last year or two. Unlike many of them the latest to grab headlines is spreading through a decidedly old school vector: document-based macros. Named Locky, the ransomware appears to borrow a technique from the Dridex banking malware. Victims...

As sales of IoT devices continue to see year-over-year double digit growth, security experts are urging the wearable industry to put security front and center when it comes to designing fitness tracker hardware, firmware and backend systems. In a report released Wednesday by the IEEE Center for Secure Design, researchers spotlighted six security red flags...

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook recap last week’s Security Analyst Summit — including lots of IoT and critical infrastructure talk, how a researcher hacked his hospital, news on APTs like Metel and Poseidon, and more. Download: Reflecting_on_SAS_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

Several flavors of ransomware, most notably Cryptowall, have come packaged with support features. But a new piece of crypto-ransomware called PadCrypt has upped the game with a live chat feature that victims can use to interact with the attackers about ransom payments and other information. Discovered by a Swiss researcher at abuse.ch, PadCrypt is the...

Nearly three months after it was spotted for sale in a Russian hacker forum, the Mazar bot has been put to use in active attacks targeting Android devices. Researchers at Heimdal Security said on Friday the bot is being sent to Android users via SMS and MMS messages and if the victim executes the APK,...

Mike Mimoso talks to Kaspersky Lab researcher Vitaly Kamluk who was critical in the discovery of the latest version of the cross-platform Adwind RAT. The remote access Trojan is unique in that it’s written in JavaScript, giving this version—which is also known as Frutas, AlienSpy and JSocket—the flexibility to be used liberally in cybercrime operations...

TENERIFE, Spain–For more than 10 years, attackers have carried out a series of covert attacks on firms worldwide and capitalized on that connection by coercing the companies into a phony business relationship where they can further steal data. Experts with Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team, who today at the Kaspersky Lab Security Analyst Summit...

TENERIFE, Spain— Many bank robbers long ago dropped the stick-up man persona in favor of a keyboard and a reliable password-stealing Trojan. Banking malware, however, may soon not be good enough for the bad guys. More and more are copycatting the techniques deployed by advanced hackers to steal millions of dollars from banks and other...