Linda McClasson reports: Months before announcing the Heartland Payment Systems (HPY) data breach, company CEO Robert Carr told industry analysts that the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was an insufficient protective measure. This is the contention of a new master complaint filed in the class action suit against Heartland, which in January…
Category: Breach Incidents
Confirmed: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online (updated)
Tom Warren reports: Neowin has received information regarding a possible Windows Live Hotmail “hack” or phishing scheme where password details of thousands of Hotmail accounts have been posted online. An anonymous user posted details of the accounts on October 1 at pastebin.com, a site commonly used by developers to share code snippets. The details have…
NY: E-mail error sends out students’ Social Security numbers
Rick Brand reports: Suffolk Community College has agreed to pay a company for the next year to monitor the credit of 300 students whose last names and Social Security numbers were mistakenly listed in an attachment to an e-mail sent to those students last month. Mary Lou Araneo, college vice president, said Sunday there is…
Royal Bank glitch allowed Visa customers to view others’ transactions
Gillian Shaw reports: The Royal Bank says it has fixed a computer security glitch that allowed some of its West Coast Visa customers to view transactions made by other cardholders. Vancouver’s Mike Jagger was checking his RBC Visa statement online when he found himself staring at someone else’s transactions — about $20,000 worth of charges….
Computer crime case dropped
Here’s a case where it sounds like sloppy security may have led to unwarranted criminal charges. Annmarie Timmins reports: The authorities have dropped their theft and computer crime case against a former Local Government Center employee because the center’s “careless” and “sloppy” security practices would undermine any charges, according to letters obtained from the Merrimack…
Arlington trash bin yields sensitive documents
Jim Douglas reports: A startling discovery in a trash bin has residents in one Arlington neighborhood angry. They want to know who tossed out dozens of sensitive, personal files linked to their homebuilder. [….] They appeared to be sales documents from K. Hovnanian Homes, a major builder. “I grabbed one of the folders and seen…