Josh Taylor reports: A prominent university professor has quit after the health department pressured her university to stop her speaking out about the Medicare and PBS history of over 2.5 million Australians being re-identifiable online due to a government bungle. In 2016, Vanessa Teague, a cryptographer from the University of Melbourne, and two of her…
Category: Government Sector
Former DHS Acting Inspector General Indicted for Stealing Database with Personnel Information
Mariam Baksh reports: A federal grand jury indicted a former acting inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security and his former subordinate in connection with the theft of proprietary software and databases containing government employees’ personal information for the purpose of defrauding the U.S. government, according to a Justice Department announcement. The Justice Department…
AU: Fears private details of Defence Force members compromised resulted in investigation
Anna Henderson and defence correspondent Andrew Greene The ABC can reveal Defence Force Recruiting’s outsourced electronic records system was taken offline and quarantined from other military networks in February, while IT specialists worked to contain an apparent security breach. Since 2003, the Powerforce database has stored sensitive information about ADF recruits, under a contract awarded…
NZ: Tuia 250 privacy breach: Tech boss signed off on government website with no testing
Craig McCulloch of RNZ reports: A top tech boss at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage (MCH) reviewed the Tuia 250 website’s security and declared it “fit for purpose” just two months before a major breach was uncovered, new correspondence shows. […] Correspondence obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act shows the website –…
Coder charged in massive CIA leak portrayed as vindictive
Jim Mustian of AP reports: A software engineer on trial in the largest leak of classified information in CIA history was “prepared to do anything” to betray the agency, federal prosecutors said Monday as a defense attorney argued the man had been scapegoated for a breach that exposed secret cyberweapons and spying techniques. A Manhattan…
Hit with ransomware, Prince Edward Island notifies residents and continues recovery efforts
Earlier today, Maze Team added Prince Edward Island (PEI) to their website where they list victims who have refused to pay their ransom demands. As they have done in other cases, the attackers also provided some files that they exfiltrated as proof. In looking into this attack, DataBreaches.net found that PEI had issued a statement…