Nihal Krishan reports: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has admitted that it failed to adequately protect COVID-19 vaccination status data for about 500,000 of its employees. Following an internal investigation by the VA’s Data Breach Response Service, the agency removed a spreadsheet containing personal details including vaccination status, according to a notice sent to the agency’s…
Category: Government Sector
Florida state tax website bug exposed filers’ data
Zack Whittaker reports: A security flaw on the Florida Department of Revenue website exposed at least hundreds of taxpayers’ Social Security numbers and bank account numbers, a security researcher found. Kamran Mohsin said the security flaw — now fixed — allowed him, or anyone else who was logged in to the state’s business tax registration website,…
Bits ‘n Pieces (Trozos y Piezas)
UY: Ministry of Transport and Public Works victim of ransomware attack Uruguay’s Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MTOP) was hit by a ransomware attack on October 17. On November 9, MTOP reported that it was back to normal after the ransomware attack, adding that it had recovered critical information and restored the affected services….
Albanian IT Staff Charged With Negligence Over Cyberattack
AP reports: Albanian prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the house arrest of five public employees they blame for not protecting the country from a cyberattack by alleged Iranian hackers. Prosecutors said the five IT officials of the public administration department had failed to check the security of the system and update it with the most recent…
Vanuatu officials turn to phone books and typewriters, one month after cyber attack
At the end of October, the tiny South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu was hit by a cyberattack with devastating consequences. They officially acknowledged the incident as an attack on November 5. Now, almost a month later, they are still struggling to recover. Christopher Cottrell reports: One month after a cyber-attack brought down government servers and…
Ca: Personal info of 5,000 Edmonton employees compromised in insider data breach
CTV reports: The city says staff were notified on Wednesday that employee information was the subject of a data breach last year. According to a written statement by Daryl Croft, branch manager of Open City and Technology (OCT), his branch discovered that records had been accessed by a former employee without authorization in May 2021….