In June, 2015, Algonquin College in Ottawa disclosed that 1,225 students in the Bachelor of Information Technology and Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs had their personal information on a server that had been accessed. The server compromise occurred in December, 2014, but the college was initially unable to determine exactly what happened. Now a Toronto law…
Category: Exposure
Personal information of hundreds of City of Houston employees exposed
Greg Picazo reports a City of Houston breach of current and former city employees’ information that will leave you muttering to yourself, “inexcusable:” The names, social security numbers and other financial information was stored in a locked filing cabinet sold by the city at auction in February. Bad enough already, right? How did they not…
Are You in the Panama Papers? Huge Database Is Released to Public
Denisse Moreno reports: People are now able to search for anyone’s name in the Panama Papers through a database provided by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on May 9. The Mossack Fonseca data leak released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other news organizations last month contains 11.5 million records from…
Chelsea and Westminster NHS trust fined £180,000 for HIV newsletter data breach
There’s a follow-up to the breach involving the 56 Dean Street clinic in London run by the the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust. The breach involved a staff member accidentally exposing all recipients of an HIV newsletter in the To: field. Today, the Information Commissioner’s Office announced a monetary penalty stemming from the incident: A London NHS…
Players’ personal information exposed in U.S. Soccer’s lawsuit
This was reported in February, but I missed it. I know, I know, I’ve let you all down. Cope with it. Better late than never, though, because so much personal information gets exposed in court filings and not enough has been done to address the problem. While the information exposed in this case is not the…
Qualcomm flaw exposes millions of Android devices to data theft risk
Lucian Constantin reports: A vulnerability in an Android component shipped with phones that use Qualcomm chips puts users’ text messages and call history at risk of theft. The flaw was found by security researchers from FireEye and was patched by Qualcomm in March. However, because the vulnerability was introduced five years ago, many affected devices…