C. Custer writes that the recent release of so many old (and large!) Chinese databases might be politically motivated as a challenge to China’s real-name registration policy: The data released on the internet last week was already widely available in hacking circles, according to Wan Tao, the founder of a popular hacking online community. Wan…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
The six worst data breaches of 2011
If you’re looking for the biggest breaches of the year in terms of numbers affected, you can find them over on DataLossDB.org or in others’ reviews. Certainly there were some really big breaches this year, but those were not necessarily the worst, in my opinion. So here’s my short list of the year’s worst breaches…
Step up Social Security number protection, OIG says
Alice Lipowicz reports: The Social Security Administration should do more to protect against identity theft by increasing security controls on Social Security numbers and programs, according to two new federal audits. One of the audits targeted the millions of SSN printouts distributed by the agency each year, which have much looser security controls than Social…
Data Security: Your Information, Their Loot
According to the DataLossDB project run by the Open Source Foundation, hundreds of millions of medical records, bank account numbers, names, and addresses were stolen or accidentally leaked in 2011. Read the article by Evan Applegate in Bloomberg Businessweek.
2011 is the Year of the Hacktivist, Verizon Report Suggests
Robert McMillan reports: Postal workers, department store clerks and elves aren’t the only ones working like crazy this holiday season. For Bryan Sartin, it’s the busiest time of year. Sartin is a director of investigative response with Verizon Business. He’s the guy you call when you’ve been hacked and he usually doesn’t get much of…
In Push For Data, Schools Expose Students To Identity Theft
Over on Huffington Post, Gerry Smith is singing my tune about the education sector in terms of data security exposing students to the risk of identity theft. Here’s a snippet: But the U.S. Department of Education has warned schools not to use students’ Social Security numbers in their databases, urging them instead to create other unique identifiers. Social…