Leo King reports: Insurance giant Zurich has lost the sensitive personal account details of 641,000 customers held on backup tape. The company admitted the tape had been missing for over a year in South Africa, after it was lost en route to a secure storage unit in August 2008. But it has only just noticed…
Category: Breach Incidents
EXCLUSIVE: UW-Madison discovers 40 computers used for file-sharing
A site reader alerted DataBreaches.net to a recent breach involving the Department of Chemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison recently. According to the notification letter, a copy of which was provided to this site, the university notified some faculty and students that their personal information was on 40 departmental computers that had been hacked. In a…
Gaping security hole turned 64,000 Time Warner cable modems into hacker prey
Tim Greene reports: A blogger helping to tune a friend’s wi-fi network uncovered a gaping security hole in Wi-Fi cable modem routers installed in 64,000 Time Warner subscribers’ homes, leaving them open to attack. Time Warner says that within the past week it has patched the problem until the manufacturer can provide a permanent fix,…
FL: Personal Info Dumped, Left For ID Crooks To Recycle
Greg Pallone reports: Thousands of names in hundreds of pages of city collections reports from 1998 were found in a newspaper and recycling bin behind the Palm Bay Community Center late last week. They contain names, addresses, phone numbers, delinquent amounts owed, plus driver’s license and social security numbers. […] Deputy City Manager Sue Hann,…
KY: Bullitt school employees’ Social Security numbers mistakenly released
Sara Cunningham reports: A Bullitt County Public Schools employee accidentally sent an e-mail message to about 1,800 school district workers Tuesday that included the names and Social Security numbers of 676 district employees. […] The employee did not mean to include Social Security numbers, Davis said. The original message was sent at 7:47 a.m. Tuesday….
The Vernon Company database accessed; customers notified
Iowa-based The Vernon Company recently discovered that its system had been accessed via its vernoncompany.com web site. The breach was discovered on October 6, and the company shut down the web site until it could patch the vulnerabilities were patched. Further investigation suggested that the breach originated in Singapore, and may have occurred as early…