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 –…
Category: Government Sector
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…
GA: Records reveal City of Cartersville paid ransomware attackers $380K
James Swift reports: On May 6, 2019, the City of Cartersville alerted residents that the local government had fallen prey to a ransomware attack. Yet since then, details on the size, scope and severity of the cybersecurity breach have remained scarce. City officials broke their nearly yearlong silence on the cyberattack, however, in the wake of…
‘Catastrophic data loss’ affects thousands of Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office dashcam videos
Rosana Hughes reports: A “catastrophic data loss” caused thousands of Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office videos from dashboard cameras to disappear — and potentially could jeopardize criminal and civil cases. All dash camera footage for all 130 patrol deputies between Oct. 25, 2018, and Jan. 23 of this year was lost after a software failure on…
PH: ‘Comeleak’ hacker cleared of cybercrime charges in largest hack in Philippine history
Nikka G. Valenzuela reports: A Manila court has dismissed the cybercrime case against an information technology graduate who was charged in connection with the hacking of the Commission of Elections (Comelec) website in 2016—the biggest private data leak in Philippine history. Paul Loui Biteng was cleared of criminal charges after the prosecution failed to prove…