Martin Austermuhle reports: The D.C. Department of Human Services says it mistakenly disclosed confidential information of close to 1,500 households receiving housing assistance to a homeless advocacy group, which then used the information to contact those people directly — a move that the city agency says was unethical, but that the group defends as being in the…
Month: July 2017
Hackers Selling Access to Critical Infrastructure on Darknet
Joshua Philipp reports: Cyber mercenaries are breaching the systems of governments, financial institutions, critical infrastructure, and businesses, then selling access to them on a marketplace on the darknet, a hidden internet accessible only via specialized software. All of this is happening on a darknet black marketplace known as the CMarket or “Criminal Market,” formerly known as…
Singapore privacy watchdog proposes mandatory reporting of data breaches
Irene Tham reports: It will soon be mandatory for organisations to inform customers of personal data breaches as soon as they are discovered – if a proposed revision to the law gets the green light. Organisations must also report the breach to the privacy commission within 72 hours. The move by the Personal Data Protection…
2 ministers leave Swedish Cabinet in wake of security breach
The Associated Press reports: In a bid to avert a government crisis, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Thursday reshuffled his minority Cabinet, replacing two members, after opposition parties demanded the ouster of three government ministers over one of the largest security breaches in the country’s history. Lofven says the heads of the interior and…
Greece arrests Russian suspected of running $4 billion bitcoin laundering ring; BTC-e goes unexpectedly offline
Karolina Tagaris , Jack Stubbs and Anna Irrera report: A Russian man suspected of being the anonymous mastermind behind one of the world’s oldest crypto-currency exchanges and of laundering at least $4 billion has been arrested in Greece, police and sources said on Wednesday. Police sources identified him as Alexander Vinnik, 38, who was arrested…
Ransomware victims have paid out more than $25 million, Google study finds
Russell Brandom reports: Ransomware victims have paid more than $25 million in ransoms over the last two years, according to a study presented today by researchers at Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. By following those payments through the blockchain and comparing them against known samples, researchers were able…