The US state department recently announced a reward of up to $10 million for any information that could identify or lead to the location of individuals involved with or have key leadership positions in the Conti ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group. 

We’ve all been there. You’re messing around online and come across a link to an interesting piece of content. When you find yourself on the site, you‘re greeted with a box informing you about tracking cookies. You can clearly see an “accept” cookies button, but rejecting cookies is far more complicated, leading you to another confusing menu with myriad options that the average person is too impatient to read through. You’ve probably accepted the cookies out of frustration, even if you didn’t want to. Maybe you clicked off the site altogether without even reading the content.

While it’s not a competition, it’s fair to say that Ransomware attacks are one of the worst forms of cybercrime. Here’s how they work:

We’re only in the third decade of the 21st century and we’ve already witnessed a raft of technological advancements that not even the most forward-thinking science-fiction writers could have predicted (though I’m still holding out hope for flying cars and jetpacks that actually work). 

In mid-2021, Apple and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, gave customer data to hackers pretending to be law enforcement officials. Snap Inc. also received a fraudulent request for information, but it isn’t known whether they provided the requested data. Messaging app Discord is also believed to have been targeted by the same hacking group.

It has been revealed that hackers breached the email marketing platform Mailchimp in order to target cryptocurrency service users. Cryptocurrency hardware wallet company Trezor announced the breach on Twitter on April 3, 2022, stating that Mailchimp had confirmed a breach targeting cryptocurrency companies. 

Twitter has recently launched a Tor-friendly version of their site specifically designed to work on the Tor browser and Tor onion network.