The past twelve months in cybersecurity have been a rough ride. In cybersecurity, everything is broken — it’s just a matter of finding it — and this year felt like everything broke at once, especially towards the end of the year. But for better or worse, we end the year knowing more than we did before. Here we look back at the year that’s been, and what we learned along the way.
1. Ransomware costs businesses because of downtime, not ransom payments
Not even your precious memories are safe from hackers.
That much was made clear at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, where a security researcher demonstrated just how easy it is to remotely encrypt a digital camera with ransomware. And once that happens, you can say goodbye to all your photos — unless you pay up.
The specific camera in question was a Canon EOS 80D, but, as Eyal Itkin explained to the early Sunday morning crowd of seemingly hungover hackers, it’s likely not the only model vulnerable.
“If you can do something to cameras, you have many potential victims you can affect,” he observed. “Would you pay to get your camera back?”
Security researchers have discovered a “vaccine” for the huge cyber-attack that hit organisations across the world on Tuesday.
The creation of a single file can stop the attack from infecting a machine.
However, researchers have not been able to find a so-called kill switch that would prevent the crippling ransomware from spreading to other vulnerable computers.
Experts are still unsure about the attack’s origins or its real purpose.
Dispatches From The Front 