Whales: Giants of the Ocean

Posted by William Roberts

Whales: Giants of the Ocean

Whales are among the largest and most remarkable animals on Earth. These marine mammals live in oceans around the world, from warm tropical waters to the cold seas surrounding the poles.

Life Beneath the Surface

Although whales spend their lives in water, they breathe air through blowholes located on top of their heads. They must regularly return to the surface to breathe before diving again in search of food or traveling through the ocean.

Whales are warm-blooded, give birth to live young, and nurse their calves with milk. A thick layer of fat called blubber helps protect them from cold water and stores energy during long migrations.

Two Main Groups

Whales are generally divided into baleen whales and toothed whales. Baleen whales filter small animals from the water using flexible plates inside their mouths. This group includes blue whales, humpback whales, and gray whales.

Toothed whales use teeth to catch fish, squid, and other prey. Many of them also use echolocation, producing sounds and listening for returning echoes to understand their surroundings. Sperm whales, belugas, and orcas belong to this group.

The Blue Whale

The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever lived. An adult can grow longer than a city bus and weigh well over one hundred tonnes. Despite its enormous size, it feeds mainly on tiny crustaceans called krill.

Communication and Migration

Whales communicate using clicks, whistles, pulses, and complex songs. Some sounds can travel across great distances underwater. Humpback whales are especially famous for their long, patterned songs.

Many species migrate thousands of kilometres each year. They often feed in cold, nutrient-rich waters before traveling to warmer regions where they mate and give birth.

Protecting Whales

Commercial hunting once caused severe declines in many whale populations. Today, whales also face threats from fishing gear, ship collisions, underwater noise, pollution, and changes to ocean ecosystems.

Conservation programs, safer fishing practices, protected habitats, and international cooperation can help whale populations recover. Protecting whales also supports healthier oceans because these animals play an important role in marine food webs and nutrient cycles.

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Healthcare Orgs Warned About Gunra Ransomware Attacks

Posted by Steve Alder

CISA, the FBI, and international partners have issued a joint cybersecurity advisory about the Gunra ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, which is targeting government and critical infrastructure entities, including healthcare organizations, and organizations in other sectors. The group has conducted attacks in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific, with attacks accelerating in 2026.

Gunra ransomware was first identified as a financially motivated threat group in April 2025; however, in 2026, it transitioned into a RaaS group. The group is attempting to recruit experienced affiliates from other groups by offering an 80% cut of any generated ransoms, as well as initial access brokers who can deliver enterprise-scale footholds.

The group primarily targets Windows systems and uses advanced encryption methods. In late 2025, the group also developed a Linux variant of its encryptor to allow cross-platform targeting. The encryptor is based on leaked Conti ransomware source code. The group engages in double extortion attacks, stealing sensitive data before encrypting files. After file encryption, victims receive a ransom note in each affected directory and are required to initiate negotiations via a Tor-based negotiation panel. Victims are provided with unique login credentials to access the negotiation panel and are given between 5 and 10 days to commence negotiations.

The group has been observed gaining access to victims’ networks by exploiting known vulnerabilities in Internet-facing devices, including firewalls and VPN appliances, such as the CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472 authentication bypass vulnerabilities in FortiOS/FortiProxy. The group has also been observed exploiting Secure Shell (SSH) access control vulnerabilities in internet-facing VPN gateways.

Multiple stealth and defense impairment techniques are used to hinder detection and analysis. Data collected and exfiltrated includes business-critical documents, databases, personally identifiable information (PII), and internal email communications, including from Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint. The stolen data is used as leverage to pressure victims into paying the ransom. Threats are issued to publish or sell the stolen data on a dedicated dark web data leak site if the ransom is not paid. The group’s data leak site currently lists more than 30 worldwide victims.

The #StopRansomware cybersecurity advisory recommends taking immediate action to reduce the risk of an attack, including prioritizing patching for known exploited vulnerabilities, especially vulnerabilities in VPNs and RDP-exposed infrastructure. Networks should be segmented to hamper lateral movement from initially compromised devices to other organizational systems, and immutable backups should be created and stored in physically separate, segmented locations to ensure data can be recovered without paying the ransom.

Full details of the group’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), Indicators of Compromise (IoC), and recommended mitigations are detailed in the cybersecurity advisory.

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