Australian health insurer Medibank today confirmed that personal data belonging to around 9.7 million of its current and former customers were accessed following a ransomware incident.
The attack, according to the company, was detected in its IT network on October 12 in a manner that it said was “consistent with the precursors to a ransomware event,” prompting it to isolate its systems, but not before the attackers exfiltrated the data.
“This figure represents around 5.1 million Medibank customers, around 2.8 million ahm customers, and around 1.8 million international customers,” Medibank noted.
Compromised details include names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as Medicare numbers (but not expiry dates) for ahm customers, and passport numbers (but not expiry dates) and visa details for international student customers.
It further said the incident resulted in the theft of health claims data for about 160,000 Medibank customers, around 300,000 ahm customers, and around 20,000 international customers.
This category comprises service provider name, the locations where customers received certain medical services, and codes associated with diagnosis and procedures that were administered.
Medibank, however, said financial information and identity documents like drivers licenses have not been siphoned as part of the security breach and that no unusual activity was observed since October 12, 2022.
“Given the nature of this crime, unfortunately we now believe that all of the customer data accessed could have been taken by the criminal,” the company said, urging customers to be on the alert for any potential leaks.
In a standalone investor statement, the company also said it will not make any ransom payment to the threat actor, stating doing so will only encourage the attacker to extort its customers and make Australia a bigger target.
Johnny Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez reportedly rushed to the aid of an elderly man who collapsed during a flight from L.A. to N.Y.C. this week
Johnny Depp‘s lawyer Camille Vasquez reportedly rushed to the aid of a fellow American Airlines passenger after he had a mid-flight emergency.
Vasquez and a bodyguard were on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York this week when an unnamed man in his 70s fell to the floor while walking past the pair’s first-class seats, TMZ reported.
According to the outlet, Vasquez and the bodyguard jumped from their seats to help the man before a surgeon on board took over. The plane eventually returned to LAX, where the man — conscious at that point — was escorted off the plane by EMTs.
Camille Vasquez and Johnny Depp
| CREDIT: SHAWN THEW/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
During the incident, Vasquez reportedly got in touch with her brother-in-law, who is a doctor, to help guide her through the steps to determine whether the man had a heart attack or suffered a brain bleed as a result of his fall. The attorney’s bodyguard also reportedly used his Apple Watch to check the man’s heart rate, per TMZ.
American Airlines plane
| CREDIT: TOM PENNINGTON/GETTY IMAGES
To thank her for her efforts, flight attendants reportedly gifted Vasquez bottles of merlot and champagne and called her “Wonder Woman.”
Derek Walls, a spokesman for American Airlines, confirms to PEOPLE, “On June 20, American Airlines flight 184 with service from Los Angeles (LAX) to New York (JFK) returned to Los Angeles due to the medical needs of a customer.”
Johnny Depp decides to not jump on ‘hate bandwagon’ against Amber Heard
Johnny Depp is reportedly skipping on getting revenge against Amber heard despite Heard’s plans to appeal the verdict in the defamation trial.
An insider spilt the beans to Hollywood Life that Depp wants to focus on his life after winning the blockbuster lawsuit.
“After all is said and done, Johnny wishes no ill will for Amber. He isn’t going to jump on the social media hate bandwagon and he just wants to move forward with his own life,” a source said.
“Johnny can’t wait to go on tour next year and even though it’s a ways away he has a ton of projects lined up to keep him very busy in the meantime,” the insider continued.
“Johnny is happier than he has been in a long time and he feels like this is a whole new chapter for him.
“Music has always been cathartic for Johnny and this is really what he needs right now after all the stress and drama he’s dealt with for the past several years,” the source added.
The ‘Aquaman’ actress must post a bond for the full judgment if she wants to appeal, the judge in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial ruled
Amber Heard is officially on the hook for $10.35 million after Johnny Depp won his defamation suit against her. She will have to post a bond for that sum, plus interest, if she wants to appeal, according to a written order filed Friday.
After a six-week trial in Fairfax, Virginia, a jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, finding that Heard had defamed him by referring to herself as a domestic abuse victim in a Washington Post op-ed.
The punitive damages were reduced to $350,000 in accordance with Virginia law, bringing the grand total to $10.35 million.
In Heard’s counterclaim, the jury awarded her $2 million in compensatory damages, finding that Depp had defamed her through statements made by his attorney, Adam Waldman, to the press.
A photo combination of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp in court May 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, Pool)
During a brief hearing Friday, Judge Penney Azcarate entered a two-page ruling that states that both judgments are subject to 6% interest per year. Lawyers for the feuding exes were present. Depp and Heard were not.
The judge said that if Heard wants to appeal, she must post a bond for the full judgment of $10.35 million, plus 6% interest per year, according to a source close to Depp’s team.
Virginia civil lawyer Broderick Dunn said this wasn’t unusual.
“It is typical practice to require the non-prevailing party to post a bond for the judgment amount in order to appeal the matter,” Dunn told Fox News Digital. “They don’t have to pay the full amount, but a percentage of the amount in order to obtain a bond — a concept similar to bail in criminal court.”
Amber Heard leaves the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia following the June 1 verdict in Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against her. (Win McNamee)
A representative for the “Aquaman” actress said she still planned to appeal, mentioning the Jan. 6 House hearings in a statement.
“As stated in yesterday’s congressional hearings, you don’t ask for a pardon if you are innocent. And you don’t decline to appeal if you know you are right,” the spokesperson said.
Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp. Credit: Venla Shalin/Getty
Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck have shared a cover of The Beach Boys‘ ‘Caroline, No’ from their upcoming collaborative album, ’18’ – watch its music video below.
The single, which is an instrumental version of The Beach Boys’ original, was accompanied by a music video of Beck and his band playing the song for an appreciative live audience, though Depp was understandably missing from the music video. The pair are set to release a collaborative album called ’18’ next month on July 15 after three years of recording.
The pair also released a cover of Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus In Furs’ with the announcement of the album, along with a statement from the two artists. “When Johnny and I started playing together, it really ignited our youthful spirit and creativity. We would joke about how we felt 18 again, so that just became the album title too,” Beck said of his partner.about:blank
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Depp added: “It’s an extraordinary honour to play and write music with Jeff, one of the true greats and someone I am now privileged enough to call my brother.”
“I love him,” said the actress in part two of her interview with Guthrie, which aired on Today Wednesday. “I loved him with all my heart, and I tried the best I could to make a deeply broken relationship work and I couldn’t.”
The jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages but Heard will only have to pay $10.35 million due to a Virginia law limiting punitive damages (the judge reduced the amount). In her countersuit, Heard won one of the three defamation counts, and was awarded $2 million in damages.
Johnny Depp; Amber Heard
| CREDIT: KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY ; RON SACHS/CONSOLIDATED NEWS PICTURES/GETTY
She added, “I know that might be hard to understand or that might be easy to understand if you’ve ever loved someone. It should be easy.”
Heard also touched on the op-ed — which she wrote for The Washington Post, and did not mention Depp by name — after Guthrie, 50, brought it up.
“The op-ed wasn’t about my relationship with Johnny,” she said. “What the op-ed was about was me loaning my voice to a bigger cultural conversation that we were having at the time.”
CREDIT: TODAY/NBC
The Standstar went on to say she “obviously knew” that “it was important for me not to make it about him or to do anything like defame him. I had teams of lawyers review all the drafts of this.”
After Guthrie asked about whether she wanted Depp to be “canceled” during the “height of #MeToo,” Heard replied, “Of course not. It wasn’t about him.”
Johnny Depp’s Former Agent Says Studios Became Reluctant to Hire Him Due to Unprofessional Behavior
“I did do and say horrible, regrettable things throughout my relationship. I behaved in horrible, almost unrecognizable to myself ways,” she said. “I freely and openly and voluntarily talked about what I did. I talked about the horrible language. I talked about being pushed to the extent where I didn’t even know the difference between right and wrong.”
“I will always continue to feel like I was a part of this, like I was the other half of this relationship because I was. And it was ugly, and could be very beautiful. It was very, very toxic,” Heard continued. “We were awful to each other.”
For more from Heard’s interview with Guthrie, viewers can stream part of the special edition of Dateline Thursday on Peacock, ahead of it airing Friday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. The interview will then be available on Today‘s website, and the full Dateline episode will be shared on Peacock.
Camille Vasquez will represent Johnny Depp in an upcoming Los Angeles trial.
The case was brought by a film location manager who claims Depp assaulted him on set.
He alleged Depp hit him twice in the ribs, yelled at him, and eventually fired him.
Johnny Depp will reunite with his lawyer, Camille Vasquez, next month for an upcoming trial, according to court documents seen by Insider.
Vasquez is named as one of Depp’s attorneys in a case brought against him by Gregg “Rocky” Brooks, the location manager for Depp’s 2018 movie “City of Lies.”
Brooks alleged in a civil complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court that Depp hit him twice in the ribs and then yelled, “I’ll give you $100,000 to punch me right now!” while on the set of the film in LA.
Brooks is suing for undisclosed damages related to 10 counts including assault, emotional distress, wrongful termination, and retaliation.
In the complaint, Brooks claimed that on April 13, 2017, when he informed Depp about filming restrictions for the movie’s set, Depp became irate and verbally and physically abused him.
Brooks alleged that Depp’s breath “reeked of alcohol,” and that Depp’s bodyguards had to physically restrain the actor after he attacked Brooks. Brooks also claimed he was fired for refusing to stay silent about the incident.
Miriam Segal, who is also named as a defendant, was a producer for City of Lies.
“On the Monday following the incident, April 16, 2017, plaintiff returned to the production office to work on wrapping out the show,” Brooks’ lawyers wrote. “Upon arrival, plaintiff was informed that Segal wanted him to write and sign a declaration stating that he would not sue the production. When plaintiff declined to write such a statement, his services were terminated immediately.”
Vasquez represented Depp in his defamation case against Amber Heard, in which the jury found both Depp and Heard liable but awarded Depp more in damages.
The jury awarded Depp $15 million in damages, finding that Heard had defamed him for describing herself as a victim of domestic violence in an op-ed that she published in the Washington Post in 2018 that did not directly name Depp. Heard was awarded $2 million in damages due to Depp’s attorney’s claim that her allegations of sexual assault were a “hoax.”
During the trial, Vasquez became somewhat of a celebrity in her own right, with fans of Depp also throwing their support behind her on social media and outside the courthouse. Vasquez’s law firm later promoted her to partner.
A visitor from Indiana captured dramatic video of a waterfront house in Montana being swept away in a river as a torrent of rain combined with a rapidly melting snowpack caused a deluge of flooding in Yellowstone National Park.
At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning got an up-close view of the water rising and the river bank sloughing off in the raging Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door.
On Monday evening, Manning watched as the rushing waters undercut the opposite riverbank, causing a house to fall into the Yellowstone River and float away mostly intact.
“We started seeing entire trees floating down the river, debris,” Manning told The Associated Press. “Saw one crazy single kayaker coming down through, which was kind of insane.”
The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs crested at 13.88 feet Monday, higher than the previous record of 11.5 feet set in 1918, according the National Weather Service.
Manning posted more photos and video of the flooding on Facebook, writing: “Crazy times in Gardiner MT.”
In this image provided by Parker Manning, the flooding Yellowstone River undercuts the river bank, threatening a house and a garage in Gardiner, Mont., on June 13, 2022. PARKER MANNING / AP
The flooding triggered evacuations, cut off electricity and forced Yellowstone officials to close all entrances indefinitely, just as the summer tourist season was ramping up.
While numerous homes and other structures were destroyed, there were no immediate reports of injuries. Yellowstone officials said they were assessing damage from the storms, which washed away bridges, caused mudslides and left small cities isolated, forcing evacuations by boat and helicopter.
It’s unclear how many visitors are stranded or have been forced to leave the park and how many residents outside the park have been rescued and evacuated.
Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.
The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstone’s busy North Entrance. Cooke City was also isolated by floodwaters and evacuations were also issued for residents in Livingston.
Officials in Park County, which encompasses those cities, said on Facebook Monday evening that extensive flooding throughout the county also had made drinking water unsafe in many areas. Evacuations and rescues were ongoing and officials urged people who were in a safe place to stay put overnight.
The Montana National Guard said Monday it sent two helicopters to southern Montana to help with the evacuations.
Cory Mottice, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana, said rain is not in the immediate forecast, and cooler temperatures will lessen the snowmelt in coming days.
“This is flooding that we’ve just never seen in our lifetimes before,” Mottice said.
Floodwaters inundated a street in Red Lodge, a Montana town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic, winding route into the Yellowstone high country. Twenty-five miles to the northeast, in Joliet, Kristan Apodaca wiped away tears as she stood across the street from a washed-out bridge, The Billings Gazette reported.
The log cabin that belonged to her grandmother, who died in March, flooded, as did the park where Apodaca’s husband proposed.
“I am sixth-generation. This is our home,” she said. “That bridge I literally drove yesterday. My mom drove it at 3 a.m. before it was washed out.”
On Monday, Yellowstone officials evacuated the northern part of the park, where roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time, park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement.
But the flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.
The rains hit during the high tourism season. June, at the onset of an annual wave of over 3 million visitors that doesn’t abate until fall, is one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.
Yellowstone got 2.5 inches of rain Saturday, Sunday and into Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone got as much as 4 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
In south-central Montana, flooding on the Stillwater River stranded 68 people at a campground. Stillwater County Emergency Services agencies and crews with the Stillwater Mine rescued people Monday from the Woodbine Campground by raft. Some roads in the area are closed because of flooding and residents have been evacuated.
“We will be assessing the loss of homes and structures when the waters recede,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Another day and a new record for Lake Mead as the water level dropped to 1045.51 feet Monday. But there’s now another way people have been measuring the level of the lake, the verticle speedboat.
Firmly stuck deep in the Lake Mead mud, the speedboat in the Government Wash area has been a beacon of sorts showing how much and how fast the lake is receding.
A large boat re-emerges from Lake Mead as lake levels continue to drop. May 22, 2022 (Photo: Travis Pardee)
8 News Now first reported on the boat that’s pointed straight up out of the water on May 23. At that time, we shared photographs and video taken by Travis Pardee.
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In his video, his children were swimming around the boat, still in relatively deep water and several feet from shore. Well, that video was recorded 22 days ago.
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Since then, using the vertical speedboat as a gauge, the lake has dropped almost an entire stern. Or by the official numbers, it has dropped approximately 4’4″.
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
As of June 12, the verticle speedboat remains upright and practically on dry land, except for what appears to be a large sinkhole around its stern.
Historically over the last five years, July has been the month when the annual spring decrease levels off and even increases some through August and September.
Windows and Linux systems are being targeted by a ransomware variant called HelloXD, with the infections also involving the deployment of a backdoor to facilitate persistent remote access to infected hosts.
“Unlike other ransomware groups, this ransomware family doesn’t have an active leak site; instead it prefers to direct the impacted victim to negotiations through Tox chat and onion-based messenger instances,” Daniel Bunce and Doel Santos, security researchers from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, said in a new write-up.
HelloXD surfaced in the wild on November 30, 2021, and is based off leaked code from Babuk, which was published on a Russian-language cybercrime forum in September 2021.
The ransomware family is no exception to the norm in that the operators follow the tried-and-tested approach of double extortion to demand cryptocurrency payments by exfiltrating a victim’s sensitive data in addition to encrypting it and threatening to publicize the information.
The implant in question, named MicroBackdoor, is an open-source malware that’s used for command-and-control (C2) communications, with its developer Dmytro Oleksiuk calling it a “really minimalistic thing with all of the basic features in less than 5,000 lines of code.”
Notably, different variants of the implant were adopted by the Belarusian threat actor dubbed Ghostwriter (aka UNC1151) in its cyber operations against Ukrainian state organizations in March 2022.
MicroBackdoor’s features allow an attacker to browse the file system, upload and download files, execute commands, and erase evidence of its presence from the compromise machines. It’s suspected that the deployment of the backdoor is carried out to “monitor the progress of the ransomware.”
Unit 42 said it linked the likely Russian developer behind HelloXD — who goes by the online aliases x4k, L4ckyguy, unKn0wn, unk0w, _unkn0wn, and x4kme — to further malicious activities such as selling proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits and custom Kali Linux distributions by piecing together the actor’s digital trail.
“x4k has a very solid online presence, which has enabled us to uncover much of his activity in these last two years,” the researchers said. “This threat actor has done little to hide malicious activity, and is probably going to continue this behavior.”
The findings come as a new study from IBM X-Force revealed that the average duration of an enterprise ransomware attack — i.e., the time between initial access and ransomware deployment — reduced 94.34% between 2019 and 2021 from over two months to a mere 3.85 days.
The increased speed and efficiency trends in the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) ecosystem has been attributed to the pivotal role played by initial access brokers (IABs) in obtaining access to victim networks and then selling the access to affiliates, who, in turn, abuse the foothold to deploy ransomware payloads.
“Purchasing access may significantly reduce the amount of time it takes ransomware operators to conduct an attack by enabling reconnaissance of systems and the identification of key data earlier and with greater ease,” Intel 471 said in a report highlighting the close working relationships between IABs and ransomware crews.
“Additionally, as relationships strengthen, ransomware groups may identify a victim who they wish to target and the access merchant could provide them the access once it is available.”
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
A speedboat remains vertical and almost on dry land at Lake Mead. June 12, 2022 (Photo: Duncan Phenix, KLAS)Read More »
