Not surprisingly, the Russians have made cyber-headlines with week, starting with the Department of Justice’s announcement on Monday that it had charged six officers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) with “worldwide deployment of destructive malware and other disruptive actions in cyberspace.” By Tuesday, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) announced that Russian hackers were targeting the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games organizers, logistics services and sponsors, according to ZDNet. By the week’s end, we saw more news of the European Union imposing sanctions on Russian military officials for a 2015 cyberattack on the German parliament.

There’s also been lots of news about ransomware, but IoT Business News warned that ransomware is not the only threat to be wary of. Botnets have seen significant growth, which is particularly concerning for IoT devices. A new HEH botnet is reportedly able to launch attacks on IoT devices and systems, though the success of the attacks depends on the strength of passwords and exposed ports. Also, according to Mobile World Live, Nokia has seen “an alarming rise in the number of IoT devices infected by malware.”

Now let’s turn to other news and see what’s happened in this week’s headlines.

Oct. 23: In CyberDefense offered strategies for narrowing the diversity divide in cybersecurity, which coincided with the second round of #ShareTheMicInCyber—a campaign to amplify Black voices in cybersecurity on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Oct. 22: Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, and Indian-based drug maker, said it expected its services to be “up within 24 hours” after it detected a cyberattack and preventively decided to isolate the data center services.

Oct. 22: According to news from Graham Cluley, Sopra Steria, a European IT services group, has suffered a cyberattack.

Oct. 21: In its initial public offering (IPO), cybersecurity firm McAfee Corp raised $620 million in shares sold at $20 a piece, U.S. News reported.

Oct. 21: CNN Politics reported, “Elections officials in Florida and Alaska contacted law enforcement Tuesday after registered voters reported receiving threatening emails that said, ‘Vote for Trump or else!’ ” A day later, AP reported that US officials identified Iran and attributed the activities to Tehran.

Oct. 20: The US Army’s Gen. James McConville announced plans to develop the Army’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in its own software factory, according to ExecutiveGov.

Oct. 19: DarkReading reported that NSS Labs “ceased operations” effective October 15 as a result of COVID-related impacts.

Oct. 19: Yahoo! Finance reported, “Zurich North America Insurance and Advisen Ltd. has released the tenth annual Advisen cyber survey of corporate risk managers and insurance buyers revealing current views about information security and cyber risk management.”  

Oct. 19: A cyberattack hit Mississippi’s Yazoo County School District earlier this month, and the district has reportedly voted to pay $300,000 to recover files that were encrypted by malware.

Oct. 19: Facebook has a new software based on machine learning, “which the company said was the first to be able to translate from any of 100 languages without relying on English,” Tech Xplore reported.