A senior barrister who failed to keep clients’ sensitive personal information secure has been fined £1,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Information belonging to up to 250 people, including vulnerable adults and children, was uploaded to the internet when the barrister’s husband updated software on the couple’s home computer. Some 725 unencrypted documents, which were created…
Month: March 2017
Court blocks American from suing Ethiopia for infecting his computer
John Ribeiro reports: An appeals court has barred an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen from filing a civil suit against the African country, which allegedly infected his computer with spyware and monitored his communications. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that foreign states are immune from suit in a U.S. court unless…
More reports of false tax returns in wake of W-2 phishing scams
One of the many companies who became victims of W-2 phishing this year is Berkley Mid-Atlantic Group, a property and casualty insurance firm with headquarters in Virginia. DataBreaches.net became aware of their incident when contacted by a former employee. According to BMAG’s notification to employees dated March 10, they had no then-current evidence of any misuse of employees’…
Justice Department charging Russian spies and criminal hackers in Yahoo intrusion
Update: The DOJ’s press release can be found here and the indictment can be found here. Ellen Nakashima reports: The Justice Department is set to announce Wednesday the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first U.S. criminal cyber…
Database with personal info on 33M apparently breached
Joe Uchill reports: A database of information on 33 million people was leaked to a researcher, apparently breached from a large business services company. Troy Hunt, who runs the website “Have I Been Pwned” that lets users check if their data has been pilfered, reported receiving the database in a blog post. Hunt did initial analysis of…
GMO Payment Gateway confirms data leakage from two client websites
Maria Nikolova reports: Information security is key in the financial industry but problems concerning maintaining personal data safe keep emerging. GMO Payment Gateway Inc (TYO:3769), the Japanese provider of payment processing services, has sought to apologize over personal data leakage that affected the websites of two of its clients – the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and…