Randall Stross reports: It’s easier to steal a million dollars a dollar at a time than a million dollars once. So goes an old saying. If the allegations in a civil case filed in a federal court in Chicago hold up, you can even haul off $10 million if you stick to $9 here or…
Author: Dissent
How to create a ‘super password’
John D. Sutter reports: Say goodbye to those wimpy, eight-letter passwords. The 12-character era of online security is upon us, according to a report published this week by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The researchers used clusters of graphics cards to crack eight-character passwords in less than two hours. But when the researchers applied that…
UK: Hospital bosses told to improve security
Hospital bosses in Wolverhampton have been told to tighten up security in areas where patients’ charts are stored after a computer disk containing almost 800 confidential patient files was found at a city bus stop. The recommendation was made to New Cross hospital bosses by the Information Commission following an investigation into the security breach…
FDLE: State prisoner scammed Orlando hotel guests
Susan Jacobson and Anika Myers Palm report on a case of inmate-orchestrated ID theft: A state prison inmate orchestrated an identity-theft scheme that tricked hotel employees and guests into helping him obtain credit-card numbers and personal information, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said today. Damion Andrico Goldsmith, 40, who has previous convictions for fraudulent…
Details of 7,000 Cook County patients may be on stolen hospital laptop
It is troubling that within the span of a few hours, I am having to cover two stolen laptops containing unencrypted patient information as well as Social Security numbers. In this case, Carlos Sadovi reports: A laptop computer containing sensitive information about 7,000 patients of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System was reported stolen…
Laptop stolen from U Kentucky had info on newborns and mothers
From the University of Kentucky: The University of Kentucky is notifying 2,027 people of a breach of protected health information. Between June 18 and June 21, 2010, a laptop computer containing information from the Newborn Screening Program was stolen from the Department of Pediatrics Newborn Screening Program. The theft was reported to the UK Police…