Chris Papst reports: A “technical malfunction” is being blamed after some federal retirees had their personal information sent to the wrong people—information like Social Security Numbers and tax statements. Now, some people are terrified their identities could be stolen. […] On Monday morning, the 37-year Department of Defense employee logged into her retirement account, like…
Category: Government Sector
British Hacker Linked To Attack On CENTCOM Twitter Feed
Mark Hosenball reports: The “CyberCaliphate” hacking group that attacked a Twitter account belonging to the Pentagon on Monday was founded by a Briton who was once jailed for hacking the personal address book of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to government sources and private sector security experts. U.S. and European government sources said…
Weak state servers breach causes mass identity theft in Turkey; over 50 million citizens’ identity info stolen
Hasan Bozkurt reports: The Presidency’s State Audit Institution (DDK) has revealed that the state failed to protect Turkish citizens’ ID information. The servers of the administration’s website has been easily breached, ID information of citizens have been stolen. These include the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs, the General Directorate of Land Registry and…
U.S. Military Hack Looms Over Obama Speech
Courthouse News reports: For 40 minutes on Monday, hackers posted ISIS propaganda and purported military documents on U.S. Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts, before both accounts were suspected (sic). The banner over both social media pages bore a picture of a headscarf-masked militant next to the words “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis.” Read…
UK: Sensitive personal data exposed in Open Datasets
If at first you don’t succeed, persist. And blog. Jon Baines writes: Imagine, if you will, a public authority which decides to publish as Open Data a spreadsheet of 6000 individual records of adults receiving social services support. Each row tells us an individual service user’s client group (e.g. “dementia” or “learning disability”), age range (18-64, 65-84, 84 and over),…
GA: Brooklet officer fired after security, identity breach
Holli Deal Saxon reports: A former Brooklet police officer fired for sharing information about candidates for the town’s police chief position said he was terminated unfairly and improperly, but the Brooklet city councilman who supervises the police department says the officer was fired for breaking privacy laws. Former police Sgt. Jonathan McGahee was terminated Dec….