Dana Liebelson reports: With Healthcare.gov plagued by technical difficulties, the Obama administration is bringing in heavyweight coders and private companies like Verizon to fix the federal health exchange, pronto. But web security experts say the Obamacare tech team should add another pressing cyber issue to its to-do list: eliminating a security flaw that could make sensitive user information, including Social Security…
Category: Government Sector
Update: Dept. of Energy hack affected 7.5x as many individuals as originally reported
Kudos to Mathew J. Schwartz of InformationWeek for following up on the July Dept. of Energy hack. In August, Schwartz reported that the breach involved an outdated version of ColdFusion. In September, he reported that the number affected was not 14,000 – as originally estimated by DOE – but about 53,000. Today, Schwartz calls our…
UK privacy watchdog fines Ministry of Justice for email leaks of prisoner details
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has served the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) with a monetary penalty of £140,000 after a serious data breach led to the details of all of the prisoners serving at HMP Cardiff being emailed to three of the inmates’ families. The breach was only discovered when one of the recipients contacted…
Monterey County computer hack exposes information of 145,000 residents
Jim Johnson reports: Personal information from nearly 145,000 Monterey County residents who received social services assistance was potentially exposed to “overseas” computer hackers who tapped into a county computer in March. The hacked computer included names, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, addresses and dates of birth for 144,493 people who received CalFresh, MediCal,…
IRS Officials Sent Private Data Over Personal Email Accounts – Issa
CJ Ciaramella reports: Senior Internal Revenue Service officials—including one at the heart of the IRS “targeting” scandal—violated agency policies and possibly federal records laws by using private email to send confidential taxpayer information, the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in a letter. In a Sept. 30 letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Daniel Werfel…
City Of Wichita Website Hit By Hackers Over The Weekend
KAKE reports: The City of Wichita says it’s [sic] website was hacked over the weekend, compromising the personal information of 29,000 vendors and employees. In a news release, city officials say hackers may have gained access to Social Security numbers, taxpayer identification numbers and banking information of vendors and employees who were reimbursed by the…