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…
Category: Government Sector
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…
Identity thieves hit 29 City of Pittsburgh employees
Joe Smydo reports: At least 29 city employees from multiple departments are victims of identity theft, according to an e-mail that Pittsburgh police sent Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and other top city officials over the weekend. The employees received bills from PayPal for purchases they didn’t make, Detective Christopher Jordan of the computer crimes unit said…