As previously reported on this site, a file cabinet containing paper records on New Jersey and Pennsylvania policy holders had been found by the side of the road in Connecticut. Aetna reported the incident to HHS last week, indicating that 6,372 policy holders were affected (in contrast to earlier reports variously indicating 4,900 or 5,000)….
Author: Dissent
Petri bill would enlist IRS against identity theft
U.S. Rep. Tom Petri is introducing federal legislation to fix a loophole that the IRS claims prevents it from informing people if the IRS detects that their Social Security Number has been fraudulently used… … One resident of Princeton, Wis., learned that he was a victim of the fraud as a result of a call…
Three breach reports, three sides of the elephant?
The recently released reports by Verizon, ArcSight/Ponemon, and Digital Forensics all offer some interesting data and statistics on breaches, but after reading them, I am reminded of the analogy of the six blind men and the elephant, as their findings are not always wholly consistent with each other. If we can generalize from the Verizon…
Hackers fool world’s largest companies using smooth talk
From coverage of the social engineering contest at DefCon: … “Out of all the companies called today, not one company shut us down,” said Offensive Security operations manager Christopher Hadnagy, part of the social-engineer.org team behind the competition that kicked off late last week. The team kept hackers within the boundaries of the law, but…
NJ: Tenants can’t get answers on Guttenberg security breach
Residents of Guttenberg’s subsidized public housing projects are afraid their personal information could be misused now that the Guttenberg Housing Authority sent them letters this month saying a computer security breach allowed “an unauthorized individual” access to their personal files, including Social Security and credit card data. The letters were not specific, and GHA officials…
ID theft feared at Ont. government website
The Canadian Press reports: An NDP critic is blasting the Ontario government after it revealed there was a possible case of identity theft linked to its driver’s licence address change website. On Saturday the government issued a news release saying it had “temporarily disabled the online address change function and has launched an investigation.” Read…