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Cybersecurity Industry News Review: February 15, 2023
By Joe Fay
NHS still recovering from ransomware incidents. Network firm employee confesses to data extortion, as U.S. cyber ambassador admits their Twitter account was hacked as the President turns to industry leaders to advise him.
NHS Still Reconnecting After 2022 Lockbit Attack on Supplier
Just how disruptive ransomware can be was illustrated this past week, six months after an attack on UK health software supplier Advanced. The attack on Advanced first emerged in August 2022, causing disruption across a range of NHS services. Health and secondary care minister Will Quince said that while most affected NHS organizations were up and running or in “in the restoration phase” some are “still undergoing reconnecting”. The recovery had affected the gathering of NHS’s monthly mental health services data, which have been “reclassified as experimental statistics to reflect this.”
Network Firm Worker Turned Data Extortionist Pleads Guilty
A former cloud lead at Ubiquiti Networks has pleaded guilty to an elaborate theft and extortion plot against the firm. Prosecutors accused Nickolas Sharp, 37, of exfiltrating data, and then sending a ransom note demanding $1.9m of bitcoin, as a team on which he worked investigated the breach. He leaked some of the data when Ubiquiti wouldn’t pay up. Sharp, from Portland, Oregon, also posed as a “whistle blower”, prompting the publication of articles that drove down Ubiquiti’s share price. Sharp now faces up to 35 years in prison when he is sentenced in May.
Biden Calls on Cyber Veterans for Telco Advice
U.S. President Joe Biden has appointed a number of cyber security veterans to his National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. The committee now includes Comcast chief info security and product privacy officer Noopur Davis, Kimberly Keever, CISO at Cox Communications, Trellix CEO Bryan Palma, Mandian CEO Kevin Mandia and Rapid 7 CEO, Corey Thomas. Meanwhile, in Germany, former European Central Bank IT chief Claudia Plattner has taken over as head of the country’s national cybersecurity agency . Predecessor Arne Schoenbohm was ousted after it emerged an industry association that he helped set up included a cybersecurity firm with links to a former member of the KGB.
U.S. Cyber Ambassador Diplomatically Discloses Twitter Account Hack
The U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy has confirmed his personal twitter account was hacked. Nate Flick is a former CEO of security company Endgame, acquired by Elastic in 2019. He took to his official Twitter account to announce the hack, adding “perils of the job”.
