Yelitza V. Dunham of Winston & Strawn LLP writes: A group of Liberty Mutual insurance companies successfully obtained declaratory relief that they had no duty to defend Aspen Way Enterprises and Aaron’s Inc. from two underlying actions alleging that spyware had been installed on rent-to-own computers. One of these, the Byrd Action, was a putative class action…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Security researchers face wrath of spy agencies
Darren Pauli reports: Researchers tasked with revealing attacks by intelligence agencies are being harassed, locked out of tenders, and in some cases deported, Kaspersky researcher Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade says. Retaliation by the unnamed agencies is in direct response to news of prominent advanced-persistent threat campaigns that have coloured information security reporting over recent years. Those…
Resource for Schools: Data Privacy Guide
The California County Superintendents Educational Services Association has produced a data privacy guide for districts containing a range of best practices, sample vendor contracts, and steps to take when a data breach occurs. Data Privacy Guide is a collaborative project between the California Education Technology Professionals Association (CETPA), the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA) and…
Veteran says financial services company USAA failed to warn her of ID theft
Paul Woolverton reports: Retired Army Maj. Veronica Carter is furious with the USAA. She says the financial services company failed to warn her when an identity thief or thieves called three times over the past month to try to persuade a customer service representative to withdraw money from her account. On Oct. 6, someone made…
X-Ray Scans Expose an Ingenious Chip-and-Pin Card Hack
Andy Greenberg reports: In a so-called “chip-and-PIN” system, a would-be thief has to both steal a victim’s chip-enabled card and be able to enter the victim’s PIN. But French forensics researchers have dissected a real-world case in which criminals outsmarted that system with a seamless chip-switching trick—and pulled off the feat with a slip of plastic…
Years of poor network security at State predated a hack linked to Russia
Ken Dilanian of AP reports: The State Department was among the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks while Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary from 2009 to 2013, a situation that continued to deteriorate as John Kerry took office and Russian hackers breached the department’s email system, according to independent audits…