On October 23, a cyber attack was hit at a Ukrainian internal airport and parts of Russian websites This “Bad Rabbit” is a type of ransomware, with similarities to WannaCry and Petya outbreaks from earlier this year. Apparently, Bad Rabbit encrypts the contents of a computer and asks for a payment of 0.05 bitcoins or $280 U.S. dollar equivalent. The malware was a distribute through a fake Adobe Flash update.
This alarms me, especially because I never think twice when asked to update my Adobe Flash. Therefore, it is important that as users on the web, we are mindful that we are downloading is legitimate.
This article made me instantly think of the Equifax breach in the news a couple weeks ago. It makes me wonder how safe any of my information is on the internet and it makes me question if any company is safe from attack. This article talks about an Ukrainian airport, which to me seems like it should be relatively hard to attack. Same goes for Equifax, that should be another company that is super secure. I agree with the author about the Adobe Flash downloads, because I almost never think about it when I hit update to the new version of Flash. That goes to show some attacks are as simple as having the user click on a virus or in the Equifax case, someone actually physically hacking into the site. Both cases are an awakening to the public that we need to do better in the future to prevent attacks like this happening often.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-equifax-breach-20170908-story.html