Adam Bennett reports: Hundreds of passport applicants have had their email addresses shared with other applicants in another government privacy botch-up. About 400 people applying online for passports were yesterday sent an email informing them of a system outage on the Department of Internal Affairs website. However, each recipient could see the email addresses –…
Category: Government Sector
Notice of Data Security Event – City of Pleasantville, New Jersey
On October 8, 2013 the City of Pleasantville (“Pleasantville”) discovered that a computer used by a Pleasantville employee was infected with malware. Pleasantville commenced an internal investigation into this incident. Pleasantville retained independent, third-party forensics experts to confirm the extent of this malware intrusion and to assist in remediating the issue. Pleasantville retained privacy and…
Detroit reports recent computer security breach affects city workers (updated)
Associated Press reports: Detroit says a recent computer security breach affected files that contained personal identifying information of a large number of city employees. The city says in a statement that Beth Niblock, Detroit’s chief information officer, plans to discuss the breach during a Monday news conference. Read more on ABC. I’ll update this post…
UK man charged with hacking US Federal Reserve
Grant Gross reports: A British man faces new charges in the U.S. for allegedly hacking into the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s servers and stealing names, email addresses and other personal information of the bank’s computer users. Lauri Love, already facing charges in New Jersey and Virginia, is now charged with one count of computer hacking and one…
UK: Failure to adequately redact results in undertaking for Treasury Solicitor’s Department
In the UK, the Treasury Solicitor’s Department has signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioenr’s Office. As described in the undertaking, there had been a number self-reported breaches involving exposure of individuals’ information due to incomplete redactions or failure to fully check: The Information Commissioner (the ‘Commissioner’) was contacted by the data controller on 6…
Asylum seeker data breach: no decision yet on whether to inform those affected
Daniel Hurst reports: Australia’s top immigration bureaucrat has told a Senate committee he is yet to make a call on whether asylum seekers will be told that his department released their confidential personal details on its website. Martin Bowles, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, characterised the data breach as “regrettable” but…