Sinead Gill reports: For six weeks, most University of Otago students, including prospective students, had their personal information unprotected. A University spokesperson told Stuff while the risk of harm was “incredibly low”, some information was potentially accessible over this period, and most students could expect to be contacted by a privacy officer.” On October 5, the University…
Author: Dissent
MPs warned to change email passwords after cyber attack on Canadian government
Irem Koca reports: Members of Parliament have been asked to change their email passwords and some internet-based services on Parliament Hill have been restricted after what’s being described as a “cyber incident.” The threat to the government’s information technology infrastructure was identified last Wednesday, said Amelie Crosson, the manager of communications in the Office of…
Keystone Health notifies 235,237 patients of data security breach
Keystone Health in Pennsylvania is notifying 235,237 patients about an incident they describe on their website: On August 19, 2022, we identified an incident that temporarily disrupted our computer systems. We reported the incident to law enforcement and worked with a third-party cybersecurity firm to determine what happened. Our investigation found that an unauthorized party…
Israeli officer reveals intricate details of IDF’s first ever cyberattack
Yoav Zitun reports: Second Lieutenant B. was a young officer in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate during the 1990s, and was the person who planned and executed the army first ever cyberattack. […] Instead of waiting for a bug in the enemy’s cyber system and “breaking in” during the short time window, the tactic the…
UK: Cyber attack recovery effort cost Hackney Council over £12m last year
Julia Gregory reports: Town Hall number-crunchers say a cyber attack in October 2020 cost the council £12.2m in the last financial year. This includes more than £444,000 spent on IT consultancy, £152,000 on recovery of the Mosaic systems used for social care data, and £572,000 on the housing register in the last financial year. The…
A Data Breach Is Bad, But Disclosing Too Much Could be Worse
Adam Stone reports: When state and local IT systems get breached, there’s a balancing act to be struck. How much can and should the public be told? Some advocates of transparency and accountability say anything that happens in the public realm ought to be public knowledge. On the opposite extreme, some IT leaders worry that…