One of the blogs that I check every day for news on data breaches is an incredible resource called cyberwarnews.info. Lee’s blog has been the source of a number of recent entries in DataLossDB. Today, Lee posted a commentary on his blog where he writes, in part: So to all the hackers, CWN continues to ask for…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
The merchant strikes back: Cisero’s sues processor and bank over pass-along fines following alleged breach
There’s an interesting lawsuit to watch in Utah. The owner of Cisero’s in Park City is suing their payment processor and bank for deducting money from their account after card issuers fined them over an alleged breach of the restaurant’s system. The case stems from a March 2008 incident. According to Cisero’s, Visa had notified…
Chinese Hacks May Be a Challenge to Real-Name Registration
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…
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.