Security Updates and Incidents
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LWN ☛ Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by CentOS (bind, cups, curl, firefox, ipa, iperf3, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, kernel, libssh2, linux-firmware, open-vm-tools, openssh, postgresql, python, python3, squid, thunderbird, tigervnc, and xorg-x11-server), Fedora (chromium, python-flask-security-too, and tkimg), Gentoo (libgit2, Opera, QPDF, and zlib), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable, gnutls, openssh, packages, and vlc), Oracle (.NET 6.0, fence-agents, frr, ipa, kernel, nss, pixman, and tomcat), and SUSE (gstreamer-plugins-bad).
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The Record ☛ Ransomware gang targets nonprofit providing clean water to world’s poorest
Water for People, a nonprofit that aims to improve access to clean water for people whose health is threatened by a lack of it for drinking and sanitation, is the latest organization to have been hit by ransomware criminals.
The ransomware-as-a-service gang Medusa listed Water for People on its darknet site Thursday night, threatening to publish stolen information unless the nonprofit pays a $300,000 extortion fee.
A Water for People spokesperson told Recorded Future News: “The accessed data predates 2021, did not compromise our financial systems and no business operations were impacted. We’re working with top incident response firms, as well as our insurance company and hardening our systems with our security team to prevent future incidents.”
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Data Breaches ☛ Quantum Radiology cyber attack: Patients kept in the dark about nature of attack while employees are being harassed by attackers
In other words, don’t tell patients that there was a ransomware attack in which their data was encrypted and their personal and protected health information acquired by the criminals?
This is why we need firm laws requiring disclosure and prohibiting deception or minimization in disclosures.
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Australia ☛ Quantum Radiology cyber attack: Former and current employees data targeted
Staff of a western Sydney radiologist, hit by a cyber attack, were told to palm the data breach off as “an operational IT incident”, while also fielding harassing calls and texts from the hackers.
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Imaging and diagnostics provider, Quantum Radiology, which operates 10 clinics across Sydney, including Nepean Radiology on High St, fell victim to a cyberattack on November 22, when an “unauthorised third party” breached the company’s IT system and “encrypted its contents” which included patients’ Medicare numbers, identifying information, claim details, image scans and reports.
A formal notification acknowledging the cyber attack was posted to Quantum’s website, which stated practitioners at each clinic had been informed and asked to assist in notifying patients.
The nature of the attack was also confirmed to staff in an email.
However an additional email sent internally in the days following instructed staff to tell patients there had been “an operational IT issue” under a set of directions headed “what to tell patients”.
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LWN ☛ A new crop of stable kernels
The 6.6.12, 6.1.73, 5.15.147, 5.10.208, 5.4.267, and 4.19.305 stable kernels have been released. They contain a relatively small number of important fixes.