Hacks

Maze exfiltrates data as well as locks down systems. Officials said they don’t know yet whether any residents’ personal information has been breached.  The Maze ransomware is likely the culprit behind the recently reported cyberattack on Pensacola, Fla. that occurred earlier this week, which downed systems citywide. In an email  sent to  county commissioners, IT administrators said that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said that the Pensacola attack was indeed ransomware, and Maze operators quickly  took responsibility  for the incident, saying that they are demanding $1 million in ransom. As of Wednesday, Pensacola’s systems were slowly coming back online, as IT staff cleared the network of malware, officials told the  Pensacola News Journal  (online payments for Pensacola Energy and city sanitation customers remained down). It’s unclear whether the city is paying the ransom, but officials did say they don’t know yet whether any residents’ personal information

Besides rewarding ethical hackers from its pocket for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities in third-party open-source projects, Google today announced financial support for open source developers to help them arrange additional resources, prioritizing the security of their products. The initiative, called " Patch Rewards Program ," was launched nearly 6 years ago, under which Google rewards hackers for reporting severe flaws in many widely used open source software, including OpenSSH, OpenSSL, Linux kernel, Apache, Nginx, jQuery, and OpenVPN. So far, Google has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars as bounty to hackers across the world who helped improve the overall security of many crucial open source software and technologies that power the Internet, operating systems, and networks. The company has now also decided to motivate volunteer work done by the open source community by providing upfront financial help to project teams, using which they can acquire additiona