Hackers Cut In Line for Burning Man Tickets, Hack Back Against Lenovo and Scam Illinois Cops
A scene from the 2014 Burning Man festival. Flickr user Gwen Schroeder
Just another week in ThreatWatch, our regularly updated index of noteworthy data breaches.
In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches:
Illinois Police Department Pays $500 Ransom for Release of Hijacked Computer
Hackers infected the station’s system with a form of the “Cryptoware” virus that froze certain files. To regain access to the data, the suburban Chicago police department was told to pay off the crooks in Bitcoin, an untraceable virtual currency.
Would-be Desert Extravaganza Attendees Burned by Ticket Hackers
About 200 programmers who found a glitch in an online ticketing system for the annual Burning Man desert camping festival cut to the front of the queue.
After Spyware Fiasco, Critics Hijack Lenovo.com Email and Web Servers
Following revelations that Lenovo pre-installed insecure software on consumer laptops, attackers commandeered the company's Lenovo.com domain name, which allowed them to intercept the Lenovo’s email and impersonate its Web pages.
Al Jazeera Mistakenly Leaks Identity of North Korean Intelligence Asset
Journalists failed to properly redact cables revealing the British government attempted to recruit a North Korean spy. Now. the lives of the foreign asset and his family potentially are in grave jeopardy.