Nathaniel Popper suggests stolen consumer data is not as big a problem or threat as it may seem, and the impact on consumers is somewhat declining over time. Read his article in the New York Times: Stolen Consumer Data Is a Smaller Problem Than It Seems. While I agree with him that there’s been a lot…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Breach litigation standing — the bell tolls for Clapper
There have been a number of law firms blogging about the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in the Neiman Marcus lawsuit as a game-changer in data breach litigation. Here’s one commentary by Taylor Brooke Concannon and Peter Sloan of Husch Blackwell: For years, federal district courts have reliably dismissed data breach consumer class actions at the outset, citing the…
FBI says hackers shake down big banks, threaten to shut sites if they don’t pay up
Priya Anand reports: More than 100 companies, including targets from big banks to brokerages in the financial sector, have received distributed denial of service threats since about April, says Richard Jacobs, assistant special agency in charge of the cyber branch at the FBI’s New York office. With these types of attacks, known as DDoS, criminals…
A third of workers admit they’d leak sensitive biz data for peanuts
John Leyden reports: A third of employees would sell information on company patents, financial records and customer credit card details if the price was right. A poll of 4,000 employees in the UK, Germany, USA and Australia found that for £5,000, a quarter would flog off sensitive data, potentially risking both their job and criminal…
A Chinese hacking group by any other name? “Black Vine”
Symantec has released a paper on a Chinese cyberespionage group that they call “Black Vine.” I’m not sure how the Chinese would feel about that name, but in any event, Symantec writes: In early 2014, Anthem was a victim of an attack that exposed 80 million patient records. The breach, which came to light in…
A reminder to google your name and email addresses occasionally
In reading news yesterday morning, I stumbled across a question posted on StackExchange: I found my user details on already old, leaked account information list I came across an old (>3 years) accounts information list which has been leaked to the web. The list included thousands (>10.000) of account details from a service or services. Apparently…