Leading information security event Infosecurity Europe will now take place July 13-15 2021 at London’s Olympia, organizer Reed Exhibitions has announced today (March 15).

The news follows a statement made by the company on February 24 explaining that the event, originally due to take place June 8-10, would be delayed until later in the year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation.

Today’s announcement outlined that Reed Exhibitions will be taking all the appropriate steps and measures to ensure that Infosecurity Europe 2021 is as COVID-secure as possible, with further details to be provided in the coming weeks.

Nicole Mills, exhibition director at Infosecurity Group, said: “Just as with every other large-scale event scheduled for this year, our plans are subject to this roadmap progressing as outlined, with the majority of COVID restrictions in England lifting on 21 June. We will of course continue to closely monitor the situation.

“The safety and health of visitors, exhibitors, speakers and staff continues to be the number one priority,” Mills added.

In the meantime, the organizers will be providing a program of virtual content on June 8-10, with more information to be made available via the Infosecurity Europe website soon.

Mills concluded: “We’re very much looking forward to bringing together the information security community in-person once again, with an engaging and inspiring exhibition and conference program that will spark ideas and conversations, enable people to do business and help to drive the industry forward. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved for their continued support and patience during the last year.”

Ride-sharing giants Lyft and Uber have struck a data-sharing deal designed to protect passenger safety.

The Industry Sharing Safety Program will for the first time enable the companies to view which drivers and delivery people have been deactivated from the other’s platform for serious safety incidents.

These will relate to the five most serious safety incidents described by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s (NSVRC) Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence Taxonomy, including sexual assault and physical assault resulting in fatality.

Workforce solutions provider HireRight will collect and manage the data and ensure each company abides by industry best practices.

“Safety should never be proprietary. You should be safe no matter what ridesharing platform you choose. We’re thrilled to come together with Lyft to improve safety for the entire industry,” said Tony West, senior vice-president and chief legal officer at Uber.

“Tackling these tough safety issues is bigger than any one of us and this new Industry Sharing Safety Program demonstrates the value of working collaboratively with experts, advocates and others to make a meaningful difference. We encourage more companies to join us.”

The initiative will be opened up to other transportation and delivery network companies within the US. However, they must adhere to specific requirements including: data accuracy, consistently applying the shared taxonomy to incident reporting, maintaining consistent and fair handling procedures and privacy measures, and communicating data on deactivated drivers with HireRight.

“Uber and Lyft have demonstrated thoughtful leadership with the Industry Sharing Safety Program. By putting aside competition, they are placing users first and building a safer rideshare community for all,” said Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of US non-profit The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

“Sexual violence thrives in secrecy. Thanks to this initiative, perpetrators will no longer be able to hide or escape accountability by simply switching ridesharing platforms.”

The CEO of a Canadian encrypted comms provider has been indicted by a federal grandy jury for allegedly helping organized drug traffickers to hide their communications from law enforcers.

An indictment returned on Friday means arrest warrants have been issued for Sky Global boss, Jean-Francois Eap, and former distributor Thomas Herdman. They are charged with conspiracy to violate the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

According to the indictment, Sky Global made hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade or more by providing sophisticated end-to-end encryption software to sit on iPhone, Google Pixel, Blackberry and Nokia handsets.

Routed through encrypted servers in Canada and France, conversations made using these devices would be impenetrable to police. The firm is accused of turning a blind eye to the activities of its customers, and actively protecting their identity.

For example, Sky Global staff used digital currencies to make anonymous purchases on the website for customers, to help launder the proceeds of drug-related crimes. They’re also said to have set up shell companies to hide Sky Global’s profits.

Last week, Europol claimed it had managed to access hundreds of millions of chats sent by the 70,000 global users of Sky ECC, helping police to disrupt over 100 planned criminal operations in EU member states and beyond.

Unbowed, Sky Global issued a press release claiming its encryption remained 100% secure and denying it is a platform of choice for criminals.

It has now emerged that investigators were able to wiretap the firm’s servers, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ). The notice explained that Europol’s actions had resulted in hundreds of arrests, and the seizure of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine, hundreds of firearms and millions of Euros.

“With technological advancement comes increased levels of criminal sophistication, but also new tools for police to combat crime,” said assistant commissioner Dwayne McDonald of the British Colombia Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

“The RCMP will continue to adopt new technologies and strategies to keep our communities safe. Collaboration with our international policing partners, such as in this case with the FBI and DEA, has become an integral part in the ever-evolving fight against organized crime.”

The number of global exploit attempts targeting vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers has risen sixfold over the past few days, as Microsoft warned of a new ransomware threat to compromised systems.

Check Point Research has been monitoring the situation since Microsoft released out-of-band patches for four zero-day bugs back on March 3.

Reports began emerging that a Chinese state-backed group dubbed Hafnium was behind attacks in the wild exploiting the flaws. Then global attacks ramped-up massively, with some estimates claiming 30,000 victims in the US and over 100,000 round the world.

ESET said this was the result of multiple other APT groups getting involved.

Having previously said on Friday that exploit attempts on Exchange servers were doubling every few hours, Check Point then noted in an update on Sunday that they had surged sixfold over the past 72 hours.

The US accounted for 21% of these, followed by the Netherlands (12%) and Turkey (12%), with government and military the hardest hit sector (27%) followed by manufacturing (22%) and software vendors (9%).

Also on Friday, Microsoft tweeted that it had detected a new ransomware family being deployed after initial compromise of unpatched Exchange servers.

“Microsoft protects against this threat known as Ransom:Win32/DoejoCrypt.A, and also as DearCry,” it said.

Mandiant vice-president of analysis, John Hultquist, warned that this could be the start of a flood of exploitation activity by ransomware threat actors.

“Though many of the still unpatched organizations may have been exploited by cyber-espionage actors, criminal ransomware operations may pose a greater risk as they disrupt organizations and even extort victims by releasing stolen emails. Ransomware operators can monetize their access by encrypting emails or threatening to leak them, a tactic they have recently adopted,” he explained.

“This attack vector may be particularly attractive to ransomware operators because it is an especially efficient means of gaining domain admin access. That access enables them to deploy encryption across the enterprise. In cases where organizations are unpatched, these vulnerabilities will provide criminals a faster path to success.”

Hultquist noted that many of the most vulnerable organizations will be SMBs or state and local government and school organizations who have scant resources to mitigate the issue.