Information Of Technology

In a New Year’s Eve apology, the LockBit ransomware gang has expressed regret for attacking Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and sent a free decryptor so files can be unscrambled.

According to Brett Callow, a B.C.-based threat analyst for Emsisoft, the gang posted a message on its site claiming the attack was the work of an affiliate and violated their rules.

“We formally apologize for the attack on sickkids.ca and give back the decryptor for free,” the note says. “The partner who attacked this hospital violated our rules, is blocked, and is no longer in our affiliate program.”

UPDATE: On Sunday evening (Jan. 1) SickKids issued a statement saying its third-party IT recovery advisors are assessing the decryptor. It also notes that IT restoration efforts “are progressing well … As of January 1, SickKids has already restored over 60 per cent of priority systems; restoration efforts are ongoing and progressing

A Canadian mining company has acknowledged being hit with a ransomware attack shortly after concluding a deal worth $230 million for the sale of an exploration site in Australia.

Vancouver-based Copper Mountain Mining Corp. said Thursday its IT systems suffered a ransomware attack on December 27th.

That was 12 days after announcing the sale of its Eva Copper Project and its 2,100 km² exploration land package in Queensland, Australia.

The combined cash and considerations value of the deal was initially announced as a total of US$149 million. Three days later that was amended to US$250 million. That included US$129 million (net of withholding taxes) and gross upfront cash consideration of US$60 million, which depends on the discovery of new ore deposits.

It isn’t known if the cyber attack was related to the announcement.

In October, the world’s second-largest copper producer, German-based Aurubis, suffered a cyber attack. “This was apparently

Merriam-Webster defines an influencer as someone who inspires or guides the actions of others, and throughout this year, we have covered a multitude of them on IT World Canada, IT Business, Channel Daily News and Direction Informatique.

One of the joys of being a journalist is the opportunity to speak with and write about these interesting and inspiring people. We asked the writers who produce the content for all four of our sites to each choose a couple of folks who are having an impact on the Canadian tech world. It was hard to select just a few, but here are their picks, in alphabetical order.

Jim Balsillie – co-founder of BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion): Among his many projects since having retired as co-CEO of BlackBerry, Balsillie has devoted a great deal of time and energy to one that may never be a household

To begin, the Apple Shopping Event is still going strong and will be going right up until Cyber Monday. Specials are still being offered at big shops like Amazon and Walmart. The fact that Apple is selling so many gadgets from previous generations makes the Cyber Monday sales it is offering this year particularly noteworthy.

Cyber Monday Deal at Apple

In addition to the two new iPhone 14 models that were released in September, we also saw new releases in the Air Pods Pro 2nd Generation, the Apple Watch Series 8, and the Apple Watch Ultra. Because of these new releases, a large number of older Apple Watch and Air Pods models are currently being discounted to levels. That have never been seen before. Consider for instance this unbelievable offer on the Air Pods Pro 1st Generation, which can be purchased at Walmart for the price of $159 right now.