Elinor Mills reports: Hackers have released consumer data stolen from an online loan provider, after the company refused to pay an extortion fee. “On June 12, AmeriCash Advance received a fax, telling us that part of our Web site had been hacked. The letter went on to demand initial payment of $15,000 from us,” AmeriCash Advance, an…
Category: Financial Sector
Should we send in CSI to figure out the source of a data dump?
Here’s a great example of the perils in trying to report on hacks or breaches disclosed on Twitter or Pastebin. A hacker who self-identified as Reckz0r initially claimed to have hacked Visa and MasterCard and to have dumped 50GB worth of data (without credit card numbers). I had my doubts, and wasn’t surprised to read…
Intuit Financial Services warns customers that email sent via VerticalResponse contained malicious code
Malware-laden email from Intuit Financial Services has been reported, but how did this happen? The following was submitted to DataBreaches.net by a reader: From: Intuit Financial Services Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:29 PM To: IFS Clients Subject: Innovation Conference email issue – June 14 Earlier today you received an email from [email protected] with the subject…
Bethpage Federal Credit Union details data breach
Human error strikes again. Claude Solnik reports: Bethpage Federal Credit Union on Tuesday said personal information of 86,000 consumer VISA debit card accounts had been exposed on the Internet. The company said an employee on May 3 posted data on a file transfer protocol site that the employee believed to be secure. But Bethpage Federal later…
AU: Privacy Commissioner finds Act breached by super fund
ABC (AU) reports an update on a situation previously mentioned on this blog where simple url manipulation exposed information: A superannuation company that allowed the private details of its customers to be leaked online has been found to have breached the Privacy Act. In September last year, a flaw was discovered in First State Super’s computer systems,…
TN: Personal Records Found in Dumpster
Some breaches make me want to curse. This news report out of Sevierville, Sevier County in Tennessee makes me want to yell, “When the hell are businesses going to start getting fined for just dumping unshredded files with PII?” … Kim Pierce runs a video store in Sevierville and was shocked at what she found…