Steve Ragan
Senior Staff Writer
Prior to joining the journalism world in 2005, Steve Ragan spent 15 years as a freelance IT contractor focused on infrastructure management and security. He's a father of two and rounded geek with a strong technical background.
92 million MyHeritage email addresses found on private server
On Monday, MyHeritage, an online genealogy platform, announced that more than 90 million of their users had email addresses and hashed passwords compromised, after a researcher discovered a file being hosted on a private server.
Salted Hash – SC 02: What a TSB phishing attack looks like
In April, TSB (a retail and commercial bank in the UK) announced they would shutdown some systems for an IT upgrade. However, the upgrade was a disaster, and over a month later customers are still having problems. As a result,...
Salted Hash Ep 26: Deception technologies that camouflage the network
Sometimes, the best defense is awareness. At their core, deception technologies can assist in this process, but what's the difference between a deception vendor and a honeypot?
Salted Hash - SC 01: What an Apple phishing attack looks like
Today on Salted Hash, we’re going to look at a phishing attack from two sides. The first side will be what the victim sees. After that, we're going to see what the criminal sees. We'll also discuss some steps administrators can take...
Salted Hash Ep 25: A quick tour of the Dark Web
The Dark Web has an interesting persona, and much of it is fueled by hype. This week on Salted Hash we speak to Alon Arvatz, co-founder at IntSights, who gives us a basic overview of some of the things people do in this somewhat...
Researchers warn PGP and S/MIME users of serious vulnerabilities
A professor at Münster University issued a warning on Sunday about serious vulnerabilities in PGP and S/MIME – two widely-used methods for encrypting email – which, if exploited, could reveal plain text communications. The issue also...
Salted Hash Ep 28: GDPR deadline fast approaches
The deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is almost here. During our trip to the RSA Conference last month, Salted Hash spoke to an expert on the subject, and learned some interesting things when it comes to...
North Korean anti-virus uses old Trend Micro components
Researchers at Checkpoint have published a report showing that North Korea's SiliVaccine, the country's anti-virus product, uses functional elements taken from a ten-year-old copy of Trend Micro's anti-virus.
Salted Hash Ep 24: Defending against mobile threats
Welcome back! After shooting several episodes during the RSA Conference in San Francisco, this week Salted Hash talks mobile threats with VASCO's Will LaSala. In addition to this week's episode, we've also got some additional footage...
Atlanta's recovery highlights the costly mistake of being unprepared
The Samsam attack against the city of Atlanta in March was chaotic and crippling. The ransomware, named for the group responsible for development and deployment, left the city scrambling to deal with critical systems that were forced...
Two incident response phases most organizations get wrong
It's important to remember: Incident response isn't a thing, it's a process.
SamSam explained: Everything you need to know about this opportunistic group of threat actors
The group behind the SamSam family of ransomware is known for recent attacks on healthcare organizations, but that's not its only target.
Customers describe the impact of the Allscripts ransomware attack
A ransomware attack against a SaaS provider hurts customers, but when it's a healthcare company that’s hit, patients suffer. Such was the case with January's attack against Allscripts, one of the largest electronic health record and...
Ransomware, healthcare and incident response: Lessons from the Allscripts attack
The actors behind SamSam launched a devastating attack against Allscripts in January, 2018. As Allscripts worked its incident response plan, things started to unravel. Here are the lessons learned.
Allscripts: Ransomware, recovery, and frustrated customers
The actors behind SamSam launched an attack against Allscripts in January 2018, leaving the company’s customers without access to the services needed to run their medical practices — some for more than a week.
Social engineering: It's time to patch the human
Is there a patch for human stupidity? If you believe the common saying, there isn't. However, Jayson E. Street says there is, and it's time companies started patching their humans. The truth is, technology alone isn't going to save...
SamSam group deletes Atlanta's contact portal after the address goes public
An image shared with local media during the early stages of a SamSam ransomware infection in Atlanta exposed the contact portal assigned to the city by the group responsible for the attack. When questioned about their actions via the...
SamSam ransomware attacks have earned nearly $850,000
First emerging in late 2015, the group believed to be responsible for the SamSam ransomware family has targeted small and large businesses, healthcare, governments, and education. To date, the group has made nearly $850,000 USD
Symantec: Diverse threats remain a consistent problem online
A report published this evening by Symantec outlines the rocky year consumers and business owners had online in 2017, covering everything from coin mining attacks, problems in the supply chain, ransomware, BEC attacks, and more.