Graham Cluley writes: A London court heard this morning how 18-year-old Jake Davis allegedly had the login passwords of 750,000 people on his computer when he was arrested in the Shetland Islands last week. Davis is suspected by the authorities of being “Topiary”, the public face of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivist groups. According to…
Author: Dissent
AU: Hacked firms could be held responsible for privacy breaches
Chris Merritt reports: The federal government is considering changing the law so corporate victims of criminal computer hacking can be sued over privacy breaches. This change formed part of discussions on Monday between Privacy Minister Brendan O’Connor and a lobby group that wants to subject companies and journalists to criminal penalties for privacy breaches. The…
Data-Breach Disclosures May Decline 50% Under Proposed Bills
Corporate disclosures of data breaches involving U.S. consumers’ personal information may fall by 50 percent under legislation before Congress. House and Senate lawmakers have introduced at least five data-security bills this year requiring businesses to notify customers of intrusions if there is a “reasonable risk” that personal data including credit-card and Social Security numbers may…
New River Health Association breach highlights a source of confusion in HHS breach tool
I love HHS’s breach tool, but it remains a source of frustration. Consider this newly added entry: “New River Health Association ,WV,,950,4/1/2011,Unauthorized Access/Disclosure,Paper,,” We know who, we know how many, we know when, but we don’t know what data types were involved, and for those who try to analyze breach data, there’s a big difference…
Stolen SilverPop laptop results in notifications
The name “SilverPop” may not seem familiar to some readers of this blog, but if you also read DataBreaches.net, you’ll recognize it as the name of an e-mail marketing service that got hacked a while back. As a consequence, a number of its clients wound up having to notify their customers that their email addresses had been…
Shortened Breach Disclosure Periods Could Hurt Consumers
Ericka Chickowski writes: As the SAFE Data Act data breach law made its way to the House Energy and Commerce Committee after passing through the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade last week, security experts are wondering at the wisdom of a national data breach law that requires notification within 48 hours of a breach’s…