The city of Johannesburg sustained a breach Thursday that led it to suspend most online services. The group claiming responsibility, the "Shadow Kill Hackers," has said they'll publicly dump all the stolen data if they're not paid four Bitcoin today.
A ransomware attack against TrialWorks, a widely used legal case management system, has caused disruption of trials and schedules as TrialWorks recovers, and as the law firms that use the product look for workarounds and alternatives. BleepingComputer says the ransomware strain involved is so far unknown, but the attack resembles in some respects August incidents that involved GandCrab's successor REvil/Sodinokibi. TrialWorks says it's decrypting the affected files, which has led to speculation that they went ahead and paid the ransom.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died Saturday in Syria's Idlib Province, killing himself and three of his children as US special operations forces cornered him in a tunnel. According to the Voice of America, US Defense Secretary Esper said "late-breaking actionable intelligence" developed that morning enabled the attack to be executed within hours. Reuters says Al-Baghdadi was located with the assistance of captured ISIS leaders. Whatever its accuracy, this report and others like it will probably erode the terrorist group's relationships of trust. One of al-Baghdadi's principal lieutenants, spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was, the Times reports, killed in a US airstrike hours after the Idlib raid. A Bloomberg op-ed argues that terrorist groups like ISIS have proven resilient to leaders' deaths. Expect any regrouping to be foreshadowed by information operations.