Alan Johnson reports: State investigators have uncovered a scheme where the identities of prison inmates were stolen to fraudulently apply for and receive $422,523 in student college loans. Ohio Inspector General Randall J. Meyer found the fraud during a two-year investigation after receiving a tip from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General…
Month: December 2016
Heritage Auction House Sues Christie’s and Collectrium Over Data Theft
Brian Boucher reports: Dallas-based Heritage Auctions has filed suit against Christie’s accusing the auction giant of harboring a large trove of sales data stolen by the operators of its Collectrium database. The suit alleges that Collectrium staffers used various accounts, one of them registered under the name of the silver-screen spy Jason Bourne, to pilfer data…
CoStar Sues Longtime Competitor Xceligent, Alleging Data Theft
Peter Grant reports: CoStar Group Inc., one of the world’s largest commercial real-estate data companies, has taken direct aim at longtime competitor Xceligent with a lawsuit alleging Xceligent has been involved in “brazen and widespread theft” of its data and photos, according to legal papers filed Monday night. Read more on WSJ.
Yahoo to Defend Massive Data Breach on Home Court
Daniel R. Stoller reports: Yahoo! Inc. will be defending multidistrict consumer data breach claims in its home territory in the federal trial court based in Silicon Valley ( In re Yahoo Customer Data Sec. Breach Litig. , J.P.M.L., No. No, 2752, transfer order 12/7/16 ). The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation assigned Judge Lucy Koh of…
PwC sends ‘cease and desist’ letters to researchers who found critical flaw
Zack Whittaker reports: A security research firm has released details of a “critical” flaw in a security tool, despite being threatened with legal threats. Munich-based ESNC published a security advisory last week detailing how a remotely exploitable bug in a security tool, developed by auditing and tax giant PwC, could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access…
Hacker Claims Theft of Thousands of Passport Numbers from Russian Consulate
Joseph Cox reports: A hacker claims to have stolen thousands of passport numbers and other pieces of personal information from the website of a Russian consular department. The hacker, who calls himself Kapustkiy, plans to publish around a thousand records out of the 30,000 or so he allegedly obtained. The apparent target was ambru.nl, the…