#WeekendWisdom 063 Cybercrime is Crime

Liam — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 02:15:02 +0000

Welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 63. This week we’re going to talk about Cybercrime is Crime.

https://www.l2cybersecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/WeekendWisdom-063-lo.mp4

What? Are you serious? Cybercrime is Crime?

When I go to new customer who has had a hacking attempt made against them or they have suffered a ransomware incident, they often ask me what should we do. Among the first things that I tell them always to do, is they should contact An Garda Síochána because a crime has been committed.

I regularly get them saying “Sure what do the guards know about this? They can’t do anything to help me with this situation!” I keep telling them that they’re wrong and we’ve seen proof of that just this week.

What happened this week?

On the 27th of January 2021, law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, France, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine, the US, the UK and Canada, in coordination with Europol, brought down one of the biggest malware crime gangs in the world, a thing called Emotet. This was rampant and it was all across the world and it took a coordinated effort from all of these law enforcement agencies to bring these guys down.

More details of this operation are available at Eurpol’s website.

That’s good news.

So the law enforcement can do this. The guards can do this.

So please if you suffer from a Cybercrime, report it to the guards. They will be able to get more resources with more reports going into them.

So it’s really, really important that you do report any kind of Cybercrime to An Garda Síochána.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 063 Cybercrime is Crime appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

“Attack” on Garda systems is likely a Ransomware incident.

Liam — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 08:51:48 +0000

Now that the dust is settling after the IT Security incident, which caused the Garda Síochána (the Irish Police force) to shut down access to their systems late last week, it would appear that it wasn’t quite as nefarious an incident as was being portrayed in the media.

Headlines such as “Mob target Garda computers” were wildly speculative and likely wildly wrong.

According to Brian Honan, a respected IT Security expert, quoted in an article in today’s Irish Times, “his ‘best guess’ was that the Garda systems had been hit by ransomware. From reading what’s available, this does not seem to me to be a targeted attack.”

With reporters throwing around phrases like “Advanced Persistent Threat” (APT) and “Targeted Attack” like snuff at a wake, it’s no wonder the headlines were sensational.

While full details are still not available, if this had been the result of a genuine Advanced Persistent Threat, then its quite likely that the evil doers were inside Garda systems for quite some time (that’s what the “persistent” bit of this term means). In this case I wouldn’t think they would have been able to restore access to their systems quite as quickly as they did. Hence a simple ransomware incident is quite likely.

Edit: Those fun guys over at Waterford Whispers News (a satirical website) had a different view:

http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2016/08/09/we-tried-installing-windows-10-gardai-reveal-reason-behind-it-shutdown/

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