John Langeler reports: Most people would enjoy getting a $7,000 check in the mail. In the case of one West Seattle man, all the check indicated was his identity had been stolen. “The check had my Social Security Number on it as well as another woman’s name,” he said, asking us not to release his name,…
Category: U.S.
Security firm report says Target data hack was low tech
Jennifer Bjorhus reports: The U.S. Secret Service has called the criminals behind Target Corp.’s monster security breach well-organized, “highly technical” and “sophisticated.” But cybersecurity firm McAfee Inc. said in a report out Monday that the heist was anything but exotic, describing the attack as a Breach 101 operation. The thieves used easily modified off-the-shelf malware, common methods…
Statista Says Around 50,000 Users Are Impacted by Data Breach
Eduard Kovacs reports: On Saturday, we learned that statistics company Statista suffered a data breach. The company has responded to my inquiry about the incident and provided additional details. It turns out that roughly 50,000 users are impacted by the data breach. The incident was discovered after spam emails started landing in email addresses that have…
Experian Lapse Allowed ID Theft Service Access to 200M Consumer Records – Krebs
Brian Krebs writes: In October 2013, KrebsOnSecurity published an exclusive story detailing how a Vietnamese man running an online identity theft service bought personal and financial records on Americans directly from a company owned by Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus. Today’s story looks deeper at the damage wrought in this colossal misstep by one…
CA: San Juan Unified School District notifies parents of information security breach
Sharokina Shams reports: Officials at a Sacramento school district are notifying parents that records containing personal identifying information were found at the Southern California home of a wire fraud suspect. The San Juan Unified School District posted the information on its website Friday, one day after KCRA 3 informed the district that an FBI investigation had…
Leader Of Identity Theft Ring Targeting Government Employees And Others Sentenced To 12 Years
A follow-up to a case reported previously on this blog: Jenaro Blalock, 31, of Clinton, Md., was sentenced today to 12 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. Blalock also was ordered to pay full restitution to the victims. Blalock pleaded guilty on Oct….