“I sue you, You sue me, We both sue too easily. Too easily to let it show. I sue you and that’s all I know.” — wrote Art Garfunkel never. Alison Frankel reports: A day after Aetna sued the claims administrator Kurtzman Carson Consultants for exposing confidential medical information about Aetna clients in a settlement…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
FBI Private Industry Notification warns schools about TheDarkOverlord
On January 31, 2018, the FBI released a Private Industry Notification (PIN) warning schools about the hacker(s) known as TheDarkOverlord. The information in the PIN was provided by the FBI and the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, and it appears to be an expanded version of a prior alert to schools issued by…
Inside North Korea’s Hacker Army
Sam Kim reports: ….. North Korea’s hacking prowess is almost as feared globally as its nuclear arsenal. Last May the country was responsible for an internet scourge called WannaCry, which for a few days infected and encrypted computers around the world, demanding that organizations pay ransom in Bitcoin to unlock their data. A few years…
TN: Smith Dental notifies HHS of ransomware attack affecting 1,500
On January 22, Robert Smith, DMD, PC in Tennessee reported a breach to HHS. The report indicated that 1,500 patients were impacted by a hacking/IT incident involving their network. A Google search indicated that the practice was likely to be “Smith Dental” in Tennessee. But I could find no press release or statement on their…
Uber: We had “no justification” for covering up data breach
Cyrus Farivar reports: Uber’s top security official testified at Capitol Hill on Tuesday, saying that Uber had “no justification” for not coming clean sooner when it had been hit by a massive data breach in 2016. In written testimony, John Flynn, Uber’s chief information security officer, told a Senate committee that “it was wrong not…
RBS releases its year-end roundup and breach analysis
There’s nothing like some dramatic numbers to get attention to data breaches. Risk Based Security, Inc. has released their 2017 statistics, and yes, some of the numbers are dramatic. Here are just two snippets from their blog post about the report: There were 5,207 breaches recorded last year, surpassing 2015’s previous high mark by nearly…