This Week’s IT News
This week several news stories broke from new malware variants to cyber warfare. Here are the five top news stories you may have missed out on:
- FormBook Malware Has Major Targets – A new malware variant, FormBook, has been released into the wild. It is currently targeting U.S. defense contractors, aerospace organizations and manufacturing firms. FormBook is also expanding some attacks outside of the U.S. with its secondary focus being South Korea. The malware is being distributed via malicious attachments included within emails.
- North Korea Targets U.S. in Cyber Warfare – New reports confirm North Korea has been sending emails to various U.S. energy companies that are riddled with malware. This is leading to a growing concern North Korea will expand their malicious efforts to target the main economic sectors of the U.S. For now, the nation remains on high alert.
- Israeli Officials Provide U.S. With Evidence of NSA Hack – News broke this week that Israeli officials warned the U.S. of Kaspersky’s role in the NSA breach. Reports confirm Israel watched the hack in real-time and took screenshots throughout the breach. These screenshots, as well as additional documentation were provided to U.S. officials. It is believed, this could be the initial domino that started the removal of Kaspersky products from government devices.
- Equifax Breach Impacts 15.2M UK residents – Equifax previously reported the breach they experienced earlier this year, impacted approximately 400,000 United Kingdom residents. However, news broke this week that, that number is actually 15.2 million. Those impacted will not be notified until the forensic investigation is complete.
- Google Scrambles to Remove Malware Infected Plugins – Chrome extensions, posing as AdBlock Plus, were available in the Chrome Web Store for quite some time. Swift on Security recently reported the malicious versions of AdBlock Plus were downloaded over 37,000 times since September 22nd. As of this week, all malicious versions have been removed from the Web Store.
