John Leyden reports: Barclays Bank has launched an investigation following a reported security breach involving thousands of confidential customer files. The Mail on Sunday took delivery of a memory stick containing personal details of 2,000 Barclays customers from a whistleblower. The files reportedly contained passport and national insurance details, as well as financial data, health and insurance…
Month: February 2014
‘Hacker’ case pits suspect’s intellect vs. FBI surveillance
Dennis Wagner reports: In spring 2008, FBI agents were struggling to identify a criminal who electronically filed hundreds of fraudulent tax returns, ripping off the federal government for more than $3 million. Investigators and informants started referring to their phantom bad guy as “the Hacker.” Prosecutors persuaded a federal grand jury in Arizona to secretly…
What should Comcast have advised customers after breach?
So while I was offline, Comcast sent me a statement on Feb. 7 in response to repeated requests for a statement about a breach reported here on Feb. 5: “We’re aware of the situation and are aggressively investigating it,” a Comcast spokesman said. “We take our customers’ privacy and security very seriously and we currently…
Why Canada’s Privacy Commissioner and CRTC should heed PIAC/CAC’s recommendations about Bell’s “Relevant Ads Program”
This post originally appeared on PogoWasRight.org. I am cross-posting it here because I think NullCrew’s hack should inform policy decisions and public debate about a program of Bell’s that involves a lot of sharing of consumers’ personal information with “affiliates.” Bell (BCE, Bell Canada, Bell Mobility, Bell Aliant and their affiliates) believes it is engaging…
Home Depot corporate employees charged with stealing co-workers’ personal info [updated]
Rachel Stockman reports: The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a security breach at Atlanta-based Home Depot’s corporate headquarters. According to a criminal complaint, three human resources employees were arrested after accessing employees’ confidential information and opening fraudulent credit cards. […] Home Depot has notified the affected employees and is offering free credit monitoring. Read more…
Target breach happened because of a basic network segmentation error
Following up on Brian Kreb’s report that attackers were able to get to Target’s payment card system after compromising the login credentials of HVAC contractor Fazio Mechanical Services,, Jaikumar Vijayan gets responses and comments from several experts on what appears to be Target’s failure to properly segment its network. You can read his article on Computerworld.