On August 11, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) suspended wireless service. According to a statement posted on their web site the next day, their intent was to address an expected protest following an officer-involved shooting on July 3: Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices…
Category: Government Sector
HK: OFTA computer with personal data stolen
The Office of the Telecommunications Authority says a notebook computer belonging to a member of staff, which contains the personal data of more than 500 people, has been stolen. It said information stored in the computer includes personal details of OFTA’s Emergency Response System team and representatives of other government departments. OFTA has apologised to…
WA: Information breach discovered in 4,000 child-support cases
Vanessa Ho reports: The state Department of Social and Health Services said Tuesday it had wrongly disclosed addresses in nearly 4,000 child-support cases. The department said a coding error had caused the mistake, in which medical enrollment forms with the addresses of custodial parents were sent to non-custodial parents. The state considers such information confidential….
NC: VA worker sentenced for stealing vets’ identities
A Department of Veterans Affairs worker has been sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for stealing personal information from disabled North Carolina veterans to generate bogus tax returns. Michael Ray Woods, 48, of Fayetteville, was convicted in February of 12 counts of preparing false tax returns, 10 counts of wire fraud, 10 counts of…
AntiSec hackers release ‘largest cache yet’ of law enforcement data
Zack Whittaker reports: Hackers associated with the AntiSec movement — a LulzSec and Anonymous combined effort to breach systems with weak security — have released a 10GB in size cache of data belonging to law enforcement. Known as ‘Shooting Sherrifs Saturday’, this follows ‘F**k FBI Friday’ in June, where LulzSec published hundreds of hacked usernames,…
Suspected Anonymous hacker ‘had 750,000 passwords’, court hears
Graham Cluley writes: A London court heard this morning how 18-year-old Jake Davis allegedly had the login passwords of 750,000 people on his computer when he was arrested in the Shetland Islands last week. Davis is suspected by the authorities of being “Topiary”, the public face of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivist groups. According to…