Huang Tzu-ti reports: Taiwan’s civil service system reported an information security breach incident on Monday (June 24), with the personal information of at least 240,000 civil servants being compromised. Through a notice published on its website, the Ministry of Civil Service (MOCS) said it received a tip-off on June 22 about the data breach, suggesting…
Category: Government Sector
AU: Inside the police database that holds 40 million private records and any officer can access
Over the years, this site has noted reports of misuse of law enforcement databases by police employees. Here’s a report from Australia. Greg Miskelly and Peta Doherty report: An ABC investigation has exposed privacy breaches of the central police records database that holds files on millions of Australians. The Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS) database…
Ex-Senate aide sentenced to 4 years in prison for data leak
Matthew Daly of AP reports: A former congressional staffer was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to illegally posting online the home addresses and telephone numbers of five Republican senators who backed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Jackson A. Cosko, a former computer systems administrator in the office of Sen. Maggie…
Riviera Beach agrees to $600,000 ransom payment to regain data access
Tony Doris reports: The Riviera Beach City Council has authorized the city’s insurer to pay nearly $600,000 worth of ransom to regain access to data walled off through an attack on the city’s computer systems. In a meeting Monday night announced only days before, the board voted 5-0 to authorize the city insurer to pay…
Parliament chiefs investigate claims its website was hacked amid fears of confidential data breach
Matt Dathan reports: The site containing bills currently before Parliament was showing private folders not meant for publication. One Twitter user said they had found passwords had leaked online too. A Parliamentary spokesman said it was looking into the reports but said it had not found any evidence that confidential parliamentary data had been breached….
Ca: Town of Oliver notifies residents of privacy breach
Colin Dacre reports: The Town of Oliver is advising residents about a privacy breach after municipal staff accidentally sent out private tax information to three email addresses. “During the process of email notification to property owners of their 2019 property tax notice, an error was made in which the attachments on emails to three individual…