Almost 100K impacted by Maryland school district ransomware attack

Aside from primarily leveraging basic usernames for their accounts, organizations impacted by ransomware intrusions from July to September — including those in the government and healthcare industries — also mostly failed to implement multi-factor authentication that could have deterred brute-force attacks.

Included in the Phobos-hit organizations that paid a ransom were a California public school system, a North Carolina children's hospital, a Maryland-based accounting and consulting service provider, and health organizations in Pennsylvania and Maryland, revealed an unsealed indictment against suspected Phobos administrator Evgenii Ptitsyn.

Alleged Scattered Spider hackers Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, Noah Michael Urban, Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, Joel Martin Evans, and Tyler Robert Buchanan have been indicted for their involvement in a prolonged cryptocurrency theft operation that involved SMS phishing, corporate system compromise, and further phishing intrusions.