Another HUGE Consumer Data Breach; Fortune 50 Company Pays Dark Angels $75 Million Ransom; Windows 11 Gets Nifty New Feature; Millions of Chrome Users Lose Passwords… and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Millions more victims exposed in debt collection agency data breach
Financial Business and Consumer Solutions breach is much bigger than thought
The recent data breach at debt collection agency Financial Business and Consumer Solutions (FBCS) was a lot bigger than initially thought, the company has revealed.
After first reporting some 1.9 million victims were affected in the incident, the company now says the actual number may be more than 4.2 million.
In late April 2024, it was reported that FBCS suffered a cyberattack two months prior, with the company noting in a breach notification letter sent to affected customers an unnamed threat actor dwelled in its IT systems for two weeks, harvesting people’s full names, social security numbers (SSN), birth dates, account information, driver’s license numbers, and ID card numbers.
Using the stolen filesNow, however, the company has issued a new supplemental notice with the Office of the Maine Attorney General increasing the number of affected people to 4,253,394 individuals.
The company started notifying the additional people, warning them of potential risks of phishing, identity theft, and online fraud…
Dark Angels ransomware receives record-breaking $75 million ransom
A Fortune 50 company paid a record-breaking $75 million ransom payment to the Dark Angels ransomware gang, according to a report by Zscaler ThreatLabz.
“In early 2024, ThreatLabz uncovered a victim who paid Dark Angels $75 million, higher than any publicly known amount— an achievement that’s bound to attract the interest of other attackers looking to replicate such success by adopting their key tactics (which we describe below),” reads the 2024 Zscaler Ransomware Report.
This record-breaking payment was further confirmed by crypto intelligence company Chainalysis, who tweeted about it on X.
The largest known ransom payment was previously $40 million, which insurance giant CNA paid after suffering an Evil Corp ransomware attack.
While Zscaler did not share what company paid the $75 million ransom, they mentioned the company was in the Fortune 50 and the attack occurred in early 2024.
One Fortune 50 company that suffered a cyberattack in February 2024 is pharmaceutical giant Cencora, ranked #10 on the list. No ransomware gang ever claimed responsibility for the attack, potentially indicating that a ransom was paid.
BleepingComputer contacted Cencora to ask if they paid the ransom to Dark Angels but has not heard back yet.
Who is Dark AngelsDark Angels is a ransomware operation launched in May, 2022…
Read more at Bleeping Computer.
Windows 11’s hidden new ‘end task’ option means you can say goodbye to Task Manager drama at last
Tackle frozen apps easily and swiftly with this hidden Windows feature
Windows 11 users, take note: there’s a hidden feature which was recently introduced by Microsoft that allows you to kill an app that has become unresponsive (or isn’t working in some way) in a far quicker manner than the normal route.
The new piece of functionality is an option to directly right-click on the icon of any app in the taskbar and select End Task to kill it, there and then – in the same way you can nuke an app in Task Manager, but with much less hassle.
This traditional method of dismissing a crashed or unresponsive app in Windows 11 (or Windows 10) is to open Task Manager (pressing Ctrl + Shift + Escape is the quickest way), then you must scroll through to find the misbehaving software process. It’s then a case of clicking on the app and pressing the Delete key (or you can right-click and select End Task from the flyout menu).
I find myself having to quit apps forcibly from time to time, and having to do it this way, via Task Manager, is rather cumbersome…
Passwords disappear for millions of Windows users thanks to Google
15 million users found themselves locked out of all their passwords for 18 hours thanks to a Google bug
To put it bluntly, it’s not been a great month for tech giants. Earlier this month, the CrowdStrike bug brought many businesses to a complete standstill and left millions facing the Blue Screen of Death, causing disruption many are still recovering from following postponed flights and surgeries, to name just a few inconveniences.
Well, not to be left out, Google had to cause its own chaos, according to this report from Forbes. Windows users clearly haven’t suffered enough and an estimated 15 million of them were locked out of their own passwords for nearly 18 hours from July 24 to July 25 due to “a change in product behavior” with Google Chrome.
Chrome’s Password Manager — not a failsafe
The specific problem affecting Windows users was with Google Password Manager. With Chrome boasting more than 3 million users, there are a hell of a lot of people reliant on this feature. I count myself among them, and I wouldn’t be able to access many sites I use on a daily basis without Google Password Manager remembering all of my convoluted passwords.
The issue, limited at least somewhat to the M127 version of the Chrome browser on Windows, prevented users from accessing previously stored passwords…
The brilliant Google Maps feature that nobody seems to know about
Google Maps offers a nifty web-only feature that can make it easier for you to plan trips. Here’s how to turn it on and use it.
Did you know Google Maps has a feature called Travel Time that lets you to see approximately how far you can travel in a given time limit?
As of now, this feature works with Walking and Driving navigation, but not Cycling or Public Transportation. It’s also only available in the web version of Google Maps, not the Android or iOS apps.
Here’s how you can turn on Travel Time in Google Maps and what makes it such a useful feature to start using.
How to enable Travel Time
Navigate to maps.google.com in your web browser (you don’t need to be logged in with your Google account), then hover over the bottom-left icon labeled Layers to open a menu.
In the hover menu, click More, then look under the Map Tools section and click on Travel Time to enable the feature…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
End Task is a welcome addition to the taskbar!
SB, You nailed it. I totally agree. 🙂
Can you explain why LastPass is not included in the list of safe and reliable Password Managers? Thanks