Jacquie Slater reports: Parents in Wakulla County are worried after the social security numbers of thousands of students were accidentally made public. Superintendent David Miller sent the letter to the parents of more than 2400 students in grades four through ten whose information was accidentally posted on line. The glitch was found when a parent…
Author: Dissent
Steam database hacked; extent of breach still unclear
Steam Forums has issued a statement concerning a November 6 intrusion. Their notice reads: Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users: Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums. We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam…
UK: Gambling worker guilty of selling 65,000 bingo players’ details
A former gambling industry worker who unlawfully obtained and sold personal data relating to over 65,000 online bingo players has been found guilty of committing three offences under section 55 of the Data Protection Act. Marc Ben-Ezra, of Finchley, was given a three year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,700 to Cashcade Limited as…
Fr: Activists hack ruling party’s phone numbers
Odd… I didn’t come across this one via my usual resources and am having trouble tracking it down, but media are reporting it, so: Hackers have published personal details including phone numbers of senior members of right-wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling party, claiming the action on behalf of all the party’s “victims”. The UMP…
Anti-government feeling inspires dump of employees’ usernames and passwords
Oops. Drafted this yesterday, but never posted it. I’m old, I forget… Hex00010 of TeaMp0isoN dumped a bunch of foreign government employees’ usernames, e-mail addresses, and passwords on Pastebin. The passwords for Australian legislators and officials are in clear-text; those for other countries or organizations may be encrypted or decrypted, variously. Checking them out, I…
Senator Franken considering legislation to encourage (but not require?) encryption for healthcare and OMR providers
Coverage by Diana Bartz of Reuter’s from today’s Senate subcommittee hearing on protecting health information privacy in a digital world: […] “We know from the statistics on breaches that have occurred since the notification provisions went into effect in 2009 that the healthcare industry appears to be rarely encrypting data,” according to written testimony by Deven…