Jim Johnson reports:
Personal information from nearly 145,000 Monterey County residents who received social services assistance was potentially exposed to “overseas” computer hackers who tapped into a county computer in March.
The hacked computer included names, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, addresses and dates of birth for 144,493 people who received CalFresh, MediCal, CalWorks and Foster Care payments through the county between 2002 and 2009, said Sam Trevino, spokesman for the county Department of Social Services.
Read more on Monterey Herald. It’s not clear whether the hackers were actually able to access the personal information. What’s especially frustrating about this breach is that the hacked computer should not have been online at all:
The computer had not been in use since 2009, Robinson said, and had been shut down but remained connected to the state network. The investigation concluded a power surge rebooted it at some point, he said. It had been used to send print jobs to the printer and contained a record of the personal information associated with the print commands.